Suite Life: Immortal
by Thor2000
Summary: My very asked Maddie-centric sequel to "Return to 613" leading to the events of "The Suite Life on Deck" with Maddie finding her life's calling as a costumed adventurer. If you liked my story "Eight Simple Rules: Bridget," you'll love this...
1. Chapter 1

Norman had his job cut out for him today. Eight of Boston's finest officers were on duty in front of the hotel to keep up the barrage against the screaming teenage girls trying to get into the Tipton Hotel. One of them tried sneaking in with Mrs. Collins and her daughters, but she quickly discounted her extra teenage daughter. Norman opened the door for her and let her in, and Officer Matt Kandros called in to manager Marion Moseby to confirm Maddie's identity as she arrived for work. Once he had the go-ahead, Kandros sheltered Maddie through the mob of screaming girls, the female screams of "I love you" and the surging hormones of every girl who felt in her heart she was meant to be the wife of the dashing young teen star upstairs in the hotel. The screams pierced the air. Their tricks to sneak in were many, but still, they did not enter.

"Who's staying in the Tipton, Norman?" Maddie asked.

"I'm not allowed to say." He responded with that tiredly aged voice of his. His daughters once screamed for Lee Majors and Donny Osmond, but his granddaughters were very much up on the teen stars of today. He wouldn't be surprised to see them out here in this mass of unbridled female idol worship.

Maddie continued on her way. Her perfect brown eyes perused the lobby from Zack and Cody racing by her side for the game room toward Arwin carrying a ladder to fix a light out in the ballroom in the rear of the hotel. Irene beamed to her as they met eyes. At the admissions desk, heiress London Tipton, mostly money but little on thinking, was holding on to manager Marion Moseby by his tie and throttling him.

"Who is it?!" She screamed. "I know there's a celebrity in this hotel! Who is it?"

"Well," Moseby lightly shook her off to compose himself. "It's not Orlando Bloom." He straightened his tie. "He won't stay in this hotel since you nearly electrocuted him."

"I didn't know that lamp was electrical." London answered. "I thought was magical."

"Yes, well…" Moseby continued to compose himself. "I'll never tell." He gestured to Esteban Ramirez, one of his bellboys to deliver a large haul of luggage upstairs. Maddie looked over the overfilled luggage cart. It was a complete matched set; very few guests had a truly matched set unless they were wealthy. A brief look to London, she dashed a bit ahead of Esteban as he rolled to the elevator.

"Who's the famous guest, Esteban?" She cooed to him in a sweet giggle.

"I can't tell you, Mrs. Maddie." He apologized. "I really can't." London groaned at this interference. She had ways to get him to talk.

"Who is it?!" London grabbed Esteban by his collar and pulled him down to her height. Her cute face contorted into a vicious scowling configuration of hostility.

"Mrs. London…" Esteban choked on her grip. "Mr. Moseby would fire me if I told you Zac Efron was in the hotel!" He caught himself too late. London and Maddie looked at each other in accelerated heart-pumping excitement.

"Zac Efron!!" Maddie screamed. "Oh my god! I have to meet him!!" Her heart started beating faster.

"Oh please!" London looked at her. "I'm going to marry him!" She kept Esteban's head in her grip and shook him around.

"I have a better chance of meeting him!" Maddie screamed back. "I look exactly like Ashley Tisdale!!"

"In what world?!" London was choking Esteban during her argument with Maddie. She released him and dashed to the elevators with Maddie by her side. They scuffled and pushed each other trying to eliminate the other one. London elbowed Maddie, and Maddie pushed her back to hit the button of the elevator. Only one of them was going to meet Zac, and it was going to be the one who could pummel the other one. Lifting himself off the floor of the lobby, Esteban looked up to Arwin lifting him up.

"Mr. Moseby is going to kill me!" Esteban feared for his job.

"Hey," Arwin dusted off his buddy with a whiskbroom. "At least you didn't say which room he's in."

"Hey… you're right…" Arwin composed himself and started walking away to resume his job. Behind him, he heard the elevators again and looked back. The first thing he saw was Maddie and London coming after him. They jumped after him trying to make a getaway and pushed him to the floor.

"Which room, Esteban?!" Maddie had him prostrate on the floor.

"I won't tell!" The worn-over bellboy commiserated. "I won't tell."

"You girls are plum out of luck." Arwin mugged a bit cockily. "Zac Efron is in Boston to film a movie called _Halloween Musical_ with Jesse McCartney, Vanessa Anne Hudgins and Hillary Duff, and Mr. Collins is the creative writer and director behind it."

"Mr. Collins?" London knew him. He was the Collins family heir who wrote those horror movies and led paranormal teams into haunted houses. He rented Suite 613 in the hotel.

"He's in Mr. Collins' suite!" Maddie screamed. London had dashed to the elevators first. She slammed hard to the back of the only open elevator and turned round to push Maddie out of it. She laughed and mocked Maddie as the doors closed. Snarling at her and wishing she had the heiress's skinny neck in her hands, Maddie noticed the other elevator opening and vaulted herself into it past the guests coming out of it. She hit the button for the sixth floor and hurriedly jumped up and down as it closed that she might catch up with London.

"Wow!" Arwin and Esteban looked at each other. "I can't believe she was able to deduce that."

"I hope Mr. Moseby doesn't discover what we did." Esteban looked back to the elevators.

"Why?" Moseby's voice was right behind them. "What did you do?" He sounded angry.

On the sixth floor, London raced from the elevator running left then right. She rarely came on this floor, and she had a vague idea which door was Mr. Collins's suite. All she recalled was that it was the same one that she and several others had held a séance in to contact the alleged ghost that was supposed to haunt the hotel. Collins had started renting it because of that reason. London dashed one way and around trying to count the room numbers in sequence, but then she heard the elevator behind her. She looked round to Maddie tackling her to the carpet.

"Me first!" Maddie screamed.

"He's my husband!" London screeched and rolled over with Maddie trying to crawl away from her. She stood and grabbed the candy counter girl by the left foot and began dragging her from the suite. Maddie tried clawing herself free then used her other foot to knock her captive foot free. London hit the wall, and Maddie started ascending to her feet. Her hand reached up to knock at the door, but one thing kept her rapping at the door. It was London's grabbing her by the scruff of her hotel uniform and pulling her from the door. She was being pulled back, back, back… London might have been little, but she was a little bit of a powerhouse. She pushed Maddie hard to the wall to knock the breath out of her and then lurched open the housekeeper's closet in the corner with her free hand. With her last breath, she pushed Maddie into it and slammed the door. Hitting the floor inside, Maddie was covered in complete darkness once the door slammed shut.

"Ow…" She winced upon the sudden impact. This fighting took a lot out of her. Gasping and breathing quickly, she lifted herself up aching from her head to her toes feeling around the darkness. Her head banged briefly into the steel shelf for a nasty lump to her head. Fumbling around a bit more, she held her hand out to complete darkness and wavered unsteadily on her feet looking for the light switch. She felt the other wall and looked round to the barely glowing streak of light on the floor coming under the door to the hall. She limped on her sore foot and rubbed her injured hip as she reached to open the door. It wouldn't open. There was a chair on the other side.

"Oh no, she didn't!!" Maddie rattled and pushed against the door. She was barricaded in and not getting out without help. She was only getting out if she could reach someone. Taking a deep breath, Maddie called out as loud as she could.

"Help me!!" Her voice pierced the floor. Her hand meanwhile passed over the light switch and she flicked it on. It was a windowless room with a dual sink in back and wood shelves for fresh linens and a metal shelf to the other floor for cleaning supplies. Her eyes passed up to the air-conditioning vent over the top shelf. She was suddenly reminded of Zack and Cody crawling through them as boys. Well, if they could do it, so could she. Determined to meet Zack Efron and Jesse McCartney in person, she placed her foot on the bottom shelf then lifted her foot off the floor for the next one. Her breath gasped as she climbed up the side of it, but as she reached the vent, she realized it was not secured to the wall. With her weight on the side of it, the whole shelf began tilting toward her. Her eyes widened in shock and the back of her head hit the wood shelves behind her on the other wall. The entire crash lasted only a second. With a loud crash, Maddie hit the floor again and was buried under heavy bottles of bleach, spilling bottles of cleaner, aerosol cans of disinfectant and air fresheners. On top of that, the broken wood shelf the steel shelves had crashed through collapsed and unleashed a fifty-pound load of sheets and pillowcases. Buried at the bottom, Maddie felt the air crushed from her lungs.

"Ow…"


	2. Chapter 2

2

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself young lady." William Collins knew Wilfred Tipton. Tipton did a lot of business with his family's company, and every time they got together, Collins had a lot to tell him about his daughter. While Tipton was busy keeping his Fortune 500 Company going and tackling with union problems and protesters against his ravaging of the countryside, Collins spent his life relaxing with his money and focusing on his pursuit of the paranormal for scarier and more atmospheric paranormal novels. At times, he became a pseudo-father figure to the unrestrained and uninhibited heiress that was London Tipton. He lead her into the lobby with his fingers clutching her by the arm.

"What did she do?" Moseby came to investigate.

"Well," Collins looked to London casually annoyed by this parental intrusion to her life. "After I barred her from the room, she went out on the ledge and broke in from my balcony…"

Moseby groaned from the news.

"Jesse locked himself in the bathroom, but she grabbed Zac by his leg and held on as he tried to shake her loose." Both Collins and Moseby looked to London. "She pulled his jeans right off screaming that they were meant to be together… right in front of Sam Raimi and the production staff as we discussed the movie."

"I was right!" London smirked proudly. "He is a boxers man."

Moseby groaned even louder from the embarrassment.

"London, what am I going to do with you?" Moseby screamed and Collins turned away to get aspirin from the hotel store. London just rolled her eyes annoyingly and gracefully glided away to return to her penthouse. She was stopped again. Moseby had her by the shoulder.

"London…" He said her name angrily. "Where's Maddie? You vanished upstairs with her right behind her!"

"Oh,…" London checked out her nails. "I locked her in a closet."

"Which closet?!" Moseby screamed at her. London looked at him and shook a bit from his frustration. When she did, what skewered brain function in her pretty head lost its train of thought and blanked out on what she was thinking. She was not a stupid person, but her attention deficiency hampered her in many ways. All she could do was roll her eyes and try to recall what floor it was.

"Uh, uh, uh…" She tried recalling. Moseby groaned out loud trying to think.

"There are four housekeeping closets on each floor!" Moseby tiredly stated the problem ahead. "I'll check them all!!" He gestured to Esteban to accompany him. "Esteban!"

"Looking for Mrs. Maddie again." The Hispanic-American bellboy mumbled out loud. "Boy, this sure feels like a rerun." He referred to when she got locked inside Suite 613 for a month back when everyone thought it was haunted and vacant. It was a very distraught moment from Maddie's past that she had worked through and had tried to forget. At the moment, she was a short distance from that room. Buried under a metal shelf, a cover of sheets knocked from their shelf and several bottles and containers of cleaning fluid, she had been inhaling spilled bleach and glass cleaners for a few hours. Unconscious across the floor, a mysterious hotel presence recognized her and coddled over her. Her skin shivered from the cold air off it.

"Maddie…" A mysterious voice cooed to her. Maddie didn't stir. A drop of blood had descended down over her head from the back of her head. Her left lip where she had hit the floor was also bleeding. Her covered face was passively serene; only in her dreams was she truly at peace with the world. Her left hand twitched from the cold presence wrapping around her.

"Maddie…" The voice beckoned to her again.

Her eyes woke up to a brilliant blue. Her breath gasped from the pain in her body and she blinked again to her normal brown eyes. Her aches and pains permeated to her soul. Taking a second to recall where she was, she started pulling herself out from under the mess and carnage of the ravaged closet. Her hand smeared the blood from her lip. Her eyes tried to focus as she braced against the wall. She only pulled herself about halfway to her feet before she stopped, collapsed to catch her breath and then pulled her injured leg to stand. A pain shot from her knee to her hip as she stood erect once more. Her breath filled the room. Why was it so cold in here?

"Oh no…" She recognized this cold feeling about her. She felt it in 613 when she lost her identity. "Not again…." She felt the room enclosing around her. Her eyes looked around scared for her life. A piercing grasp grabbed her arm, but when she screamed it stayed trapped in her throat. There was an invisible hand clutching her right wrist!

Trembling, unable to scream, Maddie tried wrestling her arm free, but she couldn't do it. It was almost as if something was tightening on her arm under her skin. A tear dropped from her eye and she clenched her fist trying to lose the sensation. It was happening again, and she couldn't stop it. Whatever spirit was restricting her wanted her to finish what it had started. Maddie backed to the door and turned round to it. Unable to control her actions, Maddie reared her right arm back and punched her fist to the door, plunging it through the solid oak door and splintering it in two!

"Oh my god…" Maddie realized what she done. "What's happening to me this time?" She pulled her arm freed through the opening she had made. What ever was controlling her had let go of her. She pushed the damaged half of the door aside and scooted the chair out of her way. Slightly limping and with her eyes full of tears, she limped achingly down the hall for the elevators. Her hand shook as her finger pushed the button to return to the lobby, and she achingly and nervously tilted her wavering head up to the floor numbers. Her eyes were full of tears as she trembled. When her elevator doors closed, the other elevator opened up.

"Maddie, we're coming…" Moseby came out first. He sent Esteban to one closet as he headed to the other. His feet carrying him along, he reached for his keys then looked up to the decimated closet. The shattered door was off its hinges, the contents were strewn everywhere and the chair once by the door was on its side a few feet away from it.

"It looks like a tornado hit it!"

Instead of arriving at the lobby, Maddie's elevator had arrived to the twentieth floor plaza. What was going on here, she wanted the lobby! Her face awash with tears, she ambled and limped fraught from her experience past snack machines and guests relaxing in the lounge area for the exterior balcony. Lance Fischman, the pool boy, looked up from straining the hotel swimming pool and noticed her wandering past him. Her lip had been bleeding and her sleeve was torn, the whole side of her uniform had been bleached to bright blue and her loose tie was hanging loose to her waist as she limped along to the edge of the building. It looked as if a powerful force had tossed her around. Her eyes were trancelike as she wandered across the veranda.

"Maddie…" Lance stopped and posed a bit with the pool skimmer by his side. "Are you okay?" He asked with concern. Maddie walked to the other side of the swimming pool and shoved a chair from the drink hut over to the wall. She placed one step on the chair, another step onto the top of the railing and pulled herself up to the top of the wall looking over the side of the building. Alarmed guests stopped talking and turned to look at the upset young blonde climbing over the top of the wall. Why wasn't anyone doing something?! Lance looked around as Maddie pulled herself up on top of the ledge. She stood on the wall and looked down to the street beneath her. Tears filled her face. She'd been crying.

"Maddie!!" Lance raced toward her. He stepped on the chair, but it buckled under his weight. "Maddie, get down from there!" He tried reaching her as others swarmed to stop her suicide attempt. Hotel employees dashed around trying to do something.

"Lance…" Maddie looked down upon him as he and other adults tried reaching her to pull her down. She was too high! "I can't control myself!!"

"Maddie!!" Two guys started lifting Lance up to grab and take her off the wall. He reached up to pull her back, but Maddie tipped herself forward out of his grasp…

…and started descending down the outside of the building.

"Maddie!!" Lance screamed from his soul in shock as she took her life. He broke down screaming her name as his eyes filled with tears. she was gone...


	3. Chapter 3

3

"Maddie…" Lance stopped and posed a bit with the pool skimmer by his side. "Are you okay?" He asked with concern. Maddie walked to the other side of the swimming pool and shoved a chair from the drink hut over to the wall. She placed one step on the chair, another step onto the top of the railing and pulled herself up to the top of the wall looking over the side of the building. Alarmed guests stopped talking and turned to look at the upset young blonde climbing over the top of the wall. Why wasn't anyone doing something?! Lance looked around as Maddie stood on the wall and looked down to the street beneath her. Tears filled her face. She'd been crying.

"Maddie!!" Lance raced toward her. He stepped on the chair, but it buckled under his weight. He reached to stop her. "Maddie, get down from there!"

"Lance…" Maddie looked down upon him as he and other adults tried reaching her to pull her down. "I can't control myself!!!"

"Maddie!!!" Two guys started lifting Lance up to grab and take her off the wall. He reached up to pull her back, but Maddie tipped herself forward out of his grasp… A woman screamed out of shock, and Maddie felt the gush of air pouring around her as she dived to earth. Her tie flew from her collar as she descended… her blouse sealing itself and molding to her body. The color washed from out of her red skirt and her red vest started extending and reshaping itself. She did not know what was happening, but she was giving into it. She heard an ethereal orchestra resonating in her head that belonged more to an old Christopher Reeve movie. She reached ahead of herself instinctively and somehow started slowing then leveling off in the air. Before she knew it, she was in different attire and instead of striking the ground at fifty miles per hour she was soaring between cars and vehicles two feet off the ground at eighty miles an hour. The orchestration resonated that old theme once more in her head. It could have belonged to that Tom Welling series on the WB. She pulled her left hand down over her chest and reached to the sky above her with her right, soaring straight up in the form of a minor sky-goddess shooting up toward the clear blue sky. Maddie's brown eyes turned bright blue as her body turned to a vessel for more godly energies. With the music resonating in her head, she heard a voice calling to her from another dimension.

"_Oh… yeah…_" The female voice sounded as if it was singing. Maddie rushed skyward even higher, her blonde tresses flying around her as she saw sights reserved for only birds and airplane pilots… and maybe chimney sweeps. She hesitated to a stop, elevated by the mystical ley lines of the planet. She looked upon her hands now much more steady. They seemed to be much more steady now, even tingling with energy she had not felt before. Her eyes looked to her feet dangling high over Boston and up to the strange red "S" emblazoned in a Kryptonian signature across her bosom. She recognized it, felt a new purpose in her head and dropped down a mere few feet before sailing through the atmosphere again.

"_I just can't stop_." The voice was singing to her again from infinity. "_There is nothing you can do or say_…" Maddie passed over the tip of the steeple at Old North Church as people cocked their heads over to try and catch a sight of her streaking over the city.

"_I've had enough_…" The voice continued. "_I'm not your property as of today_..." Maddie streaked over Beacon Street stirring up eight blocks of litter. Pedestrians turned for a brief glimpse of the figure vanishing into the sky.

"_You might think that I won't make it on my own, but now I'm_…" Maddie recognized the voice and the song. It was the voice of Britney Spears singing to her from her own imagination. Her face lit up grinning ear to ear at what she was doing.

"_Stronger than yesterday_!" She started singing along with it. "_Nothing's going stand in my way. My loneliness ain't killing me no more! I'm stronger_!" She heard gunshots and dove back to Earth.

"Okay…" Another voice screamed in the Bank of America in nearby Cambridge to terrified bankers and patrons. A security guard had been shot to the chest and gasped for air. His hand waved an illegal AK-47 while his partner carried heavy bags of money from the bank safe. "First one to lift his head gets shot like the guard." He waved his weapon as he backed to the entrance. "You don't want to mess with me; I've been on _America's Most Wanted_." He gestured to his partner and started to rush out, but as his eyes attuned to the summer sun outside, he saw a shadow blocking the light and a brief image of a blonde girl streaking toward him. He then felt the extreme blow to his chest and the impact of hitting the wall behind him hard. It felt like he'd been hit by a block of cement! His partner crashed to the floor by his side. A brief groan from his broken ribs, and he noticed his bent and distorted weapon tossed to his side and then the sight of bright red boots walking past him. One bank customer saw a female form topped by long perfect blonde hair cascading down over a red cape. The girl carefully lifted up the injured bank guard in her arms and raced out with him for the hospital, her feet descending again into the sky as police cars arrived.


	4. Chapter 4

4

Norm Peterson and Cliff Clavin walked along Beacon Street to their destination. Norm was a retired accountant living on his retirement with his wife of thirty years. Silver-haired Cliff was on his city pension living alone in an apartment grieving the death of his mother. At least he still had Norm in his life. As they spent their twilight years reminiscing with friends at their favorite Boston watering hole, they continued habits they had been doing for over twenty years.

"How's Vera doing?"

"The same." Norm answered. "She's trying to get me to lose weight."

"That sounds good." Cliff responded as they neared Melville's Restaurant. "Hey, I got a birthday card from Frasier."

"How's he doing?"

"Oh, he's doing okay. Niles and Daphne had another little girl, and…" Cliff felt a breeze on his neck and looked up to see which way the clouds were going, but when he cocked his head up, he noticed a female figure soaring over the street at the height of a three-story structure. She was blonde, attractive and garbed in blue with a red cape and large red "S" emblazoned across her chest. Her entire appearance had maybe lasted all of five seconds; Cliff looked at Norm, and Norm looked at Cliff. They hadn't had their first beer and they were already seeing things.

"Well…" Norm mumbled and rubbed his round face a moment. "That's something you don't see everyday…" He heaved himself down the sidewalk steps to his favorite basement pub.

"Norm!!!!" The patrons cheered him on…

A few blocks away, the caped immortal from the sky descended down into the area of the Tipton Hotel receiving area. She extended one dainty foot to the ground and once more made contact with terra firma. Her head rushing a moment, her mind a series of jumbled thoughts, she stood a second trying to recall who she was and what she had just did. Was that really her? Did she really stop a bank robbery and save a man's life all by herself? Was she really flying?! She held her hands up to look at them and then held them to her chest trying to compose herself. Was it really her doing all this? A cape swaying from her shoulders, she walked in a circle moving between shock and disbelief in the empty back alley and loading dock. What to do? What to do? It felt so good…

But she was also scared to death. What had happened to her? What was making her do this? Unsure what to do next, she looked down upon her Kryptonian outfit hugging her body and the comic book symbol sprawled across her teenage bosom. She did not want to be caught wearing this. She could never explain it. Her now blue eyes looked around the alley and loading dock and rose up off her feet again just four feet to step onto the loading dock. Her feet carried her ahead to the rear exit as her hand reached up to push it open for her. She turned the doorknob with her right hand and pushed against it with her left… breaking it off its hinges from her newly granted strength.

"Oh, my god!!" Maddie's voice cringed from what she did. Did she do that? The heavy steel door fell forward to the floor. Gritting her teeth in shock, Maddie feared the worst and wondered what to do. The loud thundering boom of the falling door hitting the concrete floor was going to attract a lot of attention if Arwin was in the basement. She looked around the basement storeroom, over toward the freight elevator then over the door to the back stairway heading up the back of the hotel. Her red cape sailing behind her, she hastened ahead in her short red miniskirt and form-fitting outfit and dashed up the staircase hoping she didn't ran into anyone. When she came upon the first door to meet her, she reached to pull it open. The locked door rejected her briefly, but then it cracked through the wall as she pushed against it.

"Oh my god!!!" Maddie freaked again. Just how powerful was she? She was somewhere near the hotel laundry and the grand dining room. She could smell Chef Paollo cooking his signature Veal Paollo. It smelled great, but instead of running toward it, Maddie instead lightly pressed against the door to the laundry and carefully peeked ahead. The six laundry ladies were on the other side feeding the hotel linens to the large industrial washing machines. The room was hot and sterile from the steam of the washers and the heart of the dryers. Maddie dashed ahead behind the tall washing machines toward the next door in her journey. A brief gasp for luck, her feet in her bright red boots danced over into the storeroom and closed door behind her. A few heads looked up, but no one bothered to see who it was. They returned to work, business as usual.

"What happening to me?" Maddie backed against the door and locked it; her racing breath filled her lungs and emptied them, stretching and decreasing the size of the symbol on her chest. "I don't want to be like this." She looked down upon what she was wearing and realized she either had to get it off or cover it up. She reached trying to find a zipper in her back or a way to pull off her yellow belt and red skirt. Wherever it had come from, it had been stitched and molded to her body. Stressing and trying to return herself to normal as quickly as possible, she forgot about pulling it off and attacked the shelves of hotel uniforms. She grabbed another medium-sized blouse in her range, another skirt that fitted her figure and began pulling the two pieces of clothing on over her frame. Buttoning down her new outfit, she began calming. This room really needed a mirror. Another deep breath, another mental wish to help her get through this ordeal, she looked down upon her bright red boots. They needed to go. Maybe if she dashed out the way she had entered and invaded London's shoe collection. Her head turned to the lost and found bin. Her choice was confined to a pair of men's sneakers or a pair of women's sandals. She chose the sneakers.

Hopping her way out as she exited the storeroom, Maddie stressed a bit with her blonde hair. It seemed longer than she recalled. She tied one shoe tight then the other as she returned to the hall to the back stairway and hastened along her way to the kitchen. The myriad scents of wonderful gourmet dishes leading her way, Maddie pushed through the pantry area and busy hotel employees. Rich the waiter noticed her and said hello, and Maddie uttered a brief nervous hello back to him. Through a set of double doors, she was in the heart of the kitchen. Roland the salad guy was chopping vegetables, and Teddy the wine-man was passing through with a bottle of champagne. The room was active with bubbling pots, cooking stews and gravies, frying sections of meat and boiling vegetables. Maddie just wanted to get back to her candy counter.

"Mrs. Maddie…" Chef Paollo stopped her with a big grin. "Fancy seeing you through here. Would you like to try my shrimp sashimi?" He offered her a piece of skewered shrimp to her lips. She mused delicately proper and hospitably tried it off his fork.

"It's delicious." She beamed warmly. "Hot but delicious."

"That's funny…" He looked back at her. "I thought you had eyes as brown as my French gravy, but they're really as blue as the summer sky."

"What?!" Maddie freaked and looked away trying to hide her face. Covering her eyes with her right hand, she pushed into the dining room and pressed on through the center of the dining room. It was thirty feet across with maitre'd Patrick Kiniski looking up at her dashing out to the corridor to the lobby. She didn't notice his friendly wave. Her eyes… what had happened to her eyes?!

"Oh god, oh god…" Maddie was losing it. A few dozen feet from her post she finally found a mirror framed in gold near the lobby. She turned and looked at her reflection.

Her eyes were brown… a wonderful dreamy and happy shade of dark brown. She sighed a bit to compose herself. The tip of her costume was peeking out from under her uniform. She buttoned another button, adjusted her collar and smoothed out her skirt. She looked okay even if she did not feel it. Another deep breath and she turned into the lobby and walked across the landing toward her candy counter. She stopped before the elevators; what were all the police doing here?

"Has she been depressed before?" Officer William Dunmore questioned Moseby.

"She had a mental breakdown about two years ago." Moseby reacted stressed as officers talked to guests. "I just can't believe Madeline would take her life off the hotel. Mr. Tipton is going to be extremely upset." He paused a moment. "London is going to be severely punished this time!" Officers were talking to guests from the pool area on the twentieth floor about the girl who had jumped. Lance was sitting in a chair crying his eyes out for not saving Maddie faster from jumping. Boston news reporter Nancy Puckett was interviewing people who had watched the suicide. Police were canvassing the perimeter of the hotel looking for a body. Maddie looked over and noticed Zack and Cody crying hysterically with their mother comforting them. Esteban screamed with another emotional shriek as Irene the concierge comforted him. Maddie was watching the effects of her disappearance from the roof top swimming area. She strided a bit slower to the candy counter barely noticed by her grieving friends and co-employees.

"I can't believe she did it." Arwin wandered crying his eyes out as he ambled through the crowded lobby. She ended up just before Maddie and broke down hugging her. "Maddie, did you hear? Maddie jumped off the hotel and took her…" He did a slow take and looked into her face. "Maddie!!!!!!!!!!"

Everyone's heads turned toward her preceded a second before by people rushing toward her to hug her. Zack climbed over the sofa to hug her first, and Cody sat stunned to see her again. Officer Dunmore screamed into his radio that the girl was found alive; it could not have been Maddie who jumped. They had to search for another girl. Nancy Puckett corrected her news report and tried pushing her microphone through the human wave of relieved mourners rushing upon the candy counter girl. Carey clutched her chest relieved the suicide girl was misidentified, but Lance froze in his seat trying to figure out what had happened. If it wasn't Maddie who jumped, then, who was it?

"Back off! Back off!!" Moseby pushed his way through to grab Maddie and hug her tightly. "You're alive! You're alive! You're alive!!!" He leaned back beaming ear to ear then dropped his big smiling face. "Where have you been?!!!!"

"London locked me in a closet on the sixth floor!" Maddie started telling her story while mentally abbreviating it before the interested crowd of people around her. "I knocked myself unconscious trying to get out and ruined my uniform." She looked briefly to the TV microphone held at her. "When I came to and found the door open, I came down the back stairs to get a new fresh uniform." Several people heard her and believed her while others had the story repeated to them. Moseby believed her and turned relieved and assured. Zack hugged Maddie again to have her back in his life. A few of the guests from the pool area did not believe it. They would have sworn Maddie was the same girl.

"Maddie…" Lance pushed through to see her. "But it was you. I was there. It was you I saw jump off the roof."

"Lance…" Maddie could not break his witness testimony. "I don't know what to tell you, but… I'm alive." She poked through his identity of the jumper, but not the existence of the incident. Police officers would still have to search for a body near the hotel.

"Maddie…" Moseby turned to the young beauty. "I assure you… this time, London is going to be severely reprimanded!"

Maddie didn't say anything. Carey had hugged her and whispered words of love and devotion to her. The scene was calming and dispersing a bit. Arwin and Esteban hugged and embraced her again; even Lance gave her a fond touch and platonic kiss to her cheek. He did not understand what had happened. Cody reached up and squeezed her too.

"What do you have under there?" He poked the back of her bulky shirt.

"Nothing!!!" Maddie screeched scared for her life.


	5. Chapter 5

5

A long white stretch limo pulled up alongside the curb before the Tipton. The chauffeur checked for cars coming along the busy Boston street and raced around to get the trunk. Esteban started collecting the seventeen to twenty bags from the local and very elite La Lavue Dress shop for the hard to please. The dress shop was a location for women married to politicians and female actresses as well as a certain hotel heiress named London Tipton. None of her dresses were priced below $1200. When her chauffeur opened her door, she looked out with a big beaming smile, clicked off her cell phone call to Portia Tannenbaum and extended her left arm to be treated like a princess. One leg forward, she was helped to her feet and began gliding her usual way into her father's hotel. This is what she thought normal life was all about: being the center of attention and having people around her that catered to her. When Norman opened the door for her and tipped his hat to her, she entered the hotel gliding ahead and noticed the police officers in the lobby and a number of television reporters heading out past her without noticing her. Were they not here to interview her? Were not all these people happy to see her?

"I'm here!" She announced herself and looked around. Maddie sure was getting a bit of attention; a paramedic was taking her blood pressure with one of those doctor things. London scowled a bit confusingly and marched over to the one man who had raised her for much of her life.

"Moseby… What's going on here?" London crossed the lobby. "Why isn't anyone looking at me?"

"London, you are in a lot of trouble." Moseby looked at her. "Maddie got hurt breaking out of the closet you trapped her in."

"She got out?" London looked at him with the singularity of a single-minded heiress.

"Not only that…" Moseby crossed over to hand Irene some messages. "But when we couldn't find her, we got her confused with a girl who took her life off the roof. We put her family through grief, alerted the police and fire department, had the news media here…"

"Daddy always says any publicity is good publicity."

"Not this time…." Moseby looked at her extremely upset. "He is trying to think up the worst possible punishment he can think of in order to punish you for embarrassing the Tipton."

"Well," Once again London lacked the ability to see the reality of the situation. "He can forget about sending me to parochial school. He already did that!" She snapped her fingers to Esteban and led him on the way to her penthouse. Moseby could only roll his eyes sadly to the little diva she had become. In the last few months, he was getting much more fond of Maddie as a surrogate daughter. She had an unhappy home life, and yet she loved being around people. She always had a big smile and a beautiful disposition. Blessed with a gifted singing voice and a drive to save the planet, the endearing blonde beauty could become a famous entertainer or even an influential politician.

"Maddie…" Moseby crossed over to her and paternally lent his support to her. "So… how is she?" He looked to the paramedic.

"Her heart sounds good, her pulse is strong and her reflexes are all right." EMT Jim Gage had developed an innocent crush on the cute and lovely candy girl after checking her over for almost an hour. "But she could stand to get some rest. She's had a very trying day with all this stress to her system."

"Way ahead of you…" Moseby reacted in manager mode and turned to his favorite candy girl. "Maddie, you have the rest of the day off… with pay. You head on home and take care of yourself…."

"But, Mr. Moseby…." Maddie looked at the paramedic packing up then to her employer. "I want to work. I…"

"Not another word…" Moseby wouldn't allow it. "I've already got Mia coming in… I want you to take the rest of the day off… and tomorrow too. It's the least I can do after what London did to you. I already called your mother and told her you were all right. She's expecting you."

"Thank you, Mr. Moseby…." Maddie gave him a hug and turned round past the EMTS packing their equipment. Before talking to Moseby, Gage checked Maddie out a bit and wished he were a teenager again to date her. The young blonde beauty pulled her long blonde tresses over her shoulder, collected her jacket and purse and was turning on her way to head home. Irene thanked her for being alive with a hug, and before the spiral doors, Esteban hugged her again. Norman tilted his hat to her and beamed a bit fond of her as well. Happy to be the center of so much love, Maddie shined a bit content with the world and pulled on her jacket. Although it was the summer before her final year of high school, it was a cool day and in the shadow of the Tipton, she felt just a bit chilled. A breeze nearly lifted her aloft as she palmed her bus pass in her jacket pocket, skipped down the sidewalk and looked down the street to the bus pulling away from the stop. She had never left the candy counter this early before. It was leaving behind her and she lived all the way over off of Lansdowne Street.

"Wait!" Maddie hastened her step and raced toward it pulling away. She made a move to pursue it and streaked after it. For a second, the pedestrians on the street froze for her and she was a streak of wind and a memory. The bus had to catch up with her and pass her as she realized what she had done. Behind her, a variety of people wondered about the gust of air that had passed them. A housewife had dropped her groceries, a businessman scrambled to recollect his files in his briefcase and Zack and Cody had been knocked off their skateboards. Maddie gasped and looked down to her smoking sneakers. Three blocks in half a second and she was already near the park! Did she do that?!

"Oh my god…" She whispered to herself and wondered why she should travel on something as pedantic as the bus. If she really had these wonderful godly gifts, should she not use them?

"Why not?" She asked herself. Her expression mugged a bit excitedly and looked around before dashing across the street to the Waverly Sandwich Shop and hurrying down toward its back alley. A big beaming grin on her face, she did not see Cody looking up at her vanishing behind the sandwich shop.

Her hands pulling open her uniform, her long blonde hair streaming behind her, Maddie took a running start toward the dumpsters before her, jumped up before them and felt her feet leaving the ground. She stuffed her garments into her purse and her other hand directing her path upward to the heavens. Freed to be something special, her left hand guiding her direction, she weaved over and around a clothesline, up past a fire escape ambling up alongside her and emerged over the top of the third story roof with the sky welcoming her mortal presence.

"I am so loving this!" She beamed ear to ear, her brown eyes turning a brilliant blue once more… Her voice cheered vibrantly and she briefly tossed her purse on to the roof by her side. Hovering for just a moment, she acknowledged where it landed and reached skyward once more as her body started ascending once more. She was doing it! She was really doing it! She was flying! She was soaring up through the air and looking out over the tops of Boston rooftops, steeples, towers and skyscrapers. Three hundred year old buildings and modern skyscrapers whizzed her as she realized what she could do. If she tilted her body left and followed the direction of her left hand, she could bank left and turn round past the ascending Peabody Building. She could increase her speed if she curled up her fists and extended them before her, or she could become a flying ballerina turning round her personal axis to look all around her at once just before being pulled up even higher into the atmosphere. Lawyer John Cage had a brief glimpse of her shooting past his office building as the novice goddess passed by the Kennedy Federal Building. To her right, Maddie could see the world opening beyond the sea and the edge of the sea. Air traffic controllers at Logan Airport started picking her up skimming the end of their radar nets. A panic of activity sent the FAA into alert. Their unidentified blip was turning north toward the Charles River.

Ascending even higher, Maddie became the most excited and the happiest she had ever been in her life. If this was just a dream, she did not want to wake up from it! Her voice laughed and her soul felt right with the world. Her hair pouring around her jet stream, her red cape flapping and snapping behind her, her ego went up a bit as she dipped down a bit and pushed herself higher. Air traffic control was in a panic.

"Flight 18, do you have a visual of our object?"

"I don't see it." Captain Hacker became lightly nervous. "What is it? I don't see a thing."

"Unidentified object bearing North-northeast… too small to be a private air craft!!"

"Too fast to be a copter!"

"Air Force says not it's theirs!!!"

"Flight 18, it's coming up right over you!"

"I don't have visual!" Hacker and his co-pilot were looking at the empty sky around them. All they had were clouds and sky in shades and mixtures of white to bright blue.

"I'll be so glad to get back home." Their passenger, Sharpay Evans, sipped her fruit drink and leaned back in her seat. Her brother was reading a magazine. Boston was a nice trip, but she much preferred the life that was Southern California. "If I ever run into London Tipton again, I will…." Her eyes noticed something out her starboard window. At first, she thought it was a bird, but it was too big, but it moved and flapped like a person… with a cape… and long blonde hair… Her brown eyes narrowed tried to focus on it. It drew it a bit closer, and the girl that it was looked back upon her and shined her big beaming grin. She revealed her eyes to be a brilliant blue, leaned to her right side to reveal the proud red symbol shaped to her bosom and then dipped down out of view grinning ear to ear.

"What do you see?" Ryan Evans leaned over his sister staring out of the window

"I saw a girl flying out there!" Even she didn't believe it. "She had blonde hair, a red cape, a big "S" across her chest and looked exactly like me!!!"

Ryan scowled a bit confused at her.

"You know…" He didn't know what to think. "Gabrielle did say someday your conscience was going to start bothering you."

Maddie started diving down to Boston once more. She followed the Charles River under her and came close enough upon it to trace her fingertips across its cold watery surface. When she did, passengers on an excursion boat rushed to catch her fleeting image on their camera phones. The flying girl in the red cape they watched soared upward once more toward the dam and then followed Cambridge Street down to St. James Place. Near the Tipton, it dived down to grab something up, and then it soared up toward Fenway Park to the southwest.

A few players were on the field as Maddie followed the outline of the ballpark. Her spirit seemed renewed, her reason to live rejuvenated, and she glided in a cycle once and then descended in the form of an angelic presence down on the roof of her parent's three-story townhouse. Her toes touched roof and she mentally placed herself down on her feet again. Her breath was racing excitedly. That felt so good to her! Clenching her retrieved purse, she cheered under her breath, jumped up off her feet and glided slowly in an excited ethereal somersault. She could fly! She could really fly!!! Her eyes surveyed the roof briefly and she rushed upon the door to the roof. Her fingers unlatched it quickly, but she descended slowly down the winding stairway in her costume. Reaching past the cape hanging off her shoulders, she secured the entrance to the roof and listened carefully. Her mother was talking to her grandmother on the first floor. Her feet lightly treaded down to the third floor. Her weight sounded the board that squeaked.

"Maddie?" Helen Fitzpatrick turned her head to the top floor. One second she was talking to her mother about her married older daughter, and the next she was hearing odd noises from the third floor. Something creaked at the top of the staircase, and an unidentified presence raced down the hall to her younger daughter's bedroom.

"Did Maddie come in?" She asked her mother.

"I didn't see her."

"Maddie?" Helen called up the stairs. She ascended a few steps and called again. "Maddie?" Pushing fears of prowlers and ghosts aside, she hopped up the stairs. Her bedroom and her mother's room were on the second while Maddie and her brother Liam fought over the bathroom on the third. As her eyes met the level of the third floor, she noticed the door to Maddie's room over Fenway Park standing open.

"Maddie?" She called again and strided down the hall. There was a loud thump of something on the floor. Her hand pressed against the door. Maddie hurriedly jerked her bathrobe closed over her body to keep her mother from seeing what she was wearing.

"Maddie, baby…." Mother reached out and embraced her daughter. "Oh, thank god, you're alive…" She pulled her tightly into herself. Maddie shined in her presence. "When Moseby called and said you had jumped off the Tipton, I couldn't stop crying…" Her handed wiped away belated tears of sorrow mixed with tears of joy.

"It wasn't me."

"I know… he told me." Helen vigorously bonded with her daughter. "Oh god, oh god, thank god, you're alive…. A mother should never outlive her daughter." Her face lit up with unbridled love and stared into her daughter's face before her. Something was different. Her daughter felt different. What was it?

"Mom, is there something wrong?" Maddie looked back at her.

"You seem different." Helen held Maddie chin up. "You're… shining or… Your hair's longer… brighter… I don't recall you this… tall."

"Taller?!" Maddie stepped back clutching her bathrobe closed about her costume. She looked at her reflection in her mirror. Was she taller?

"Honey," Helen dismissed it. "I know London Tipton is supposed to be your friend, but… she really treats you horrible. Couldn't you just…"

"Mom…" Maddie turned past her big sister's old dresser. "Could I get some privacy? I'd like to take a shower."

"Of course, baby…" Helen started to turn away then stepped back. "Oh yeah…" She stepped back as Maddie quickly pulled her robe closed around her red cape. "I was so traumatic over your alleged suicide that I never got the chance to call your father. I don't think he needs to learn about it."

"Right!" Maddie beamed clandestinely and let go of her robe to push her bedroom door shut behind her mother. She closed and locked it then backed against it. A breath of relief and she looked down over the shape of her chest framed by the Kryptonian symbol across her bosom.

"Oh man…" Her hand fell down by her side to her old aluminum baseball bat. Her father had once pressed her into little league ball, and she liked it, but she had grown up out of it. A deep breath spreading wide the symbol on her chest, her fingers danced over the bat and she picked it up just out of idle curiosity. Why was she holding on to it? How strong was she now? That bank guard she had carried to the hospital had to have been at least two hundred pounds. How much more could she carry? Could she bend steel? The bat wasn't steel, but it was impervious. She held on to it in both her hands, took a deep breath again and curiously started bending it. The fingers of her left hand molded first into the fat end of it as she bent it into a point. She started grinning and breathing faster.

"I did it!" Her eyes widened in stunned surprise. "I did it! Oh my god, I did it!" She looked around the room to do it again. She wanted a steel bar… a really thick steel bar! She looked at her sister's old baton… the curtain rod… the painted water pipe running up the corner of her bedroom. What else could she do? Something made her fingers tingle. She looked at her hand a second and then waved her hand through the air. When she did, her bed and her sister's beds lowered by themselves from the wall. She could do magic too?!

"Brush…" Maddie gestured for her bureau and her hairbrush jumped into her hand. She was loving it!

"Book…" Her Harry Potter book jumped up and held aloft to her, spread open to the end of her last chapter in it.

"Towel…" A towel vaulted from out of her closet and landed in her free hand. She stood excitedly taking it all in. She was irresistibly excited but scared at the same time. Did she deserve these abilities? How did she get them?

"What happened to me?!" She asked herself. Her mind shifted to other possibilities. "I sure wish I had these powers when I watched those monsters at camp!"


	6. Chapter 6

6

Her name was Madeline Margaret Genevieve Miranda Catherine Fitzpatrick. She was the daughter of Sean Irving Fitzpatrick and Helen Catherine Esmerelda Andromeda Guinevere O'Connor-Fitzpatrick, also named for a long stream of relatives. She was the younger sister of Maureen Margaret Guinevere Miranda Fitzpatrick-Stephens and the older sister of Liam Angus Fitzpatrick. She was seventeen years of age and ready to start her second to last year of public school when school started again in the fall. Much of her life had been spent at Our Sister of Perpetual Sorrow, but with the start of her high school years, she and all her friends now continued on at Cheevers High School with Zack, Cody and their friends. Public school was much more easier for her. It did not have the rigid discipline of Catholic school, and she was taking drama and chorus and physical fitness bewtween her groups. She was sleeping late this morning, her arms hugging her pillow and her lips calling it "Jesse McCartney" over and over through the night. Her bare leg poked out from under her blanket as her ten-year-old brother grinned ear-to-ear and slipped into her room. His steps lightly treaded across her carpet past her purse, a discarded pair of blue jeans and a red cape draped over a leotard with a big red symbol on the chest. The malicious prankster had other plans. He lifted his air horn to violently wake his sister from her sleep. His juvenile grin smiled over her long blonde hair obscuring her face. His hand lifted his air horn, his finger tensed on the button…

Maddie's hand jerked from under the blanket and punched him to the chest. The demented delinquent was knocked off his feet, sailed out of the room through the air and hit the wall outside the room. Dropping his weapon of torture, Liam coughed a second, reacted stunned and scared to death and looked up to his sister again. She was still asleep! What the heck had happened?! What had hit him?! His chest was pounding; his back was resonating as he landed flat to his stomach.

"Liam!" His father screamed at him. "Stop that clobbering about up there!"

"Dad!" The boy stumbled and scrambled to his feet looking for his air horn. "Maddie's possessed. She like hurled me across the house!"

"Stop telling stories about your sister!"

Maddie opened her now blue eyes and listened to her brother rushing down the steps. Sitting up in bed, she blinked her eyes back to brown, stretched her arms over her head and gleefully arched her back. She could not recall sleeping so deeply in her entire life. She felt great! Her fingers touched on the air horn that had found itself to her side. A look to see if she was alone and she encased it in her two hands, slowly crushing it between her palms. The plastic cracked and fell apart in pieces. The air-can popped apart and exploded open within her fingertips. One less tool of torture to violently expel her awake in this house, she poked her dainty toes out to the floor, extended her legs and stood erect upon her feet in her t-shirt and sweat pants. She checked out her reflection in the mirror. She looked great! Her hair was flawless, her complexion was perfect and her eyes showed no sign of puffiness.

"Wow!" She could not believe it as she palmed her hair back. "All those years of creams and mixtures and all I needed was to become a costumed crime fighter!" She took a deep breath. Despite what abilities she had, her body still required showering, and her metabolism still needed food. Her fingers responded on their own and picked up her costume and then a new pair of blue jeans from her closet and other items of clothing from her closet. Her father could hear her rummaging about the third floor from the bathroom to her room and back again. Her mother lifted her head to the sounds as well. Liam looked over to the newspaper his father was reading. There was a long side article next to the main story about the current gas prices. The title read, "Blonde Presence Buzzes Boston." Liam tried leaning in at it, but his father folded the cover back to read the sports pages. His grandmother gave him more scrambled eggs. A loud crash came from the back stairs…

"Yeah!!!" Maddie had jumped over the railing from the top step of the staircase and had landed vigorously in a comic book style pose. Feeling great and alive, she reared herself back to her feet and assumed her normal stance. Her appearing act had startled her father and surprised her mother. Grandma Chloe even held her chest a bit from her appearance. They all looked over to Maddie strolling into the kitchen, kissing her grandmother and pulling out a chair to sit. Her brother eyed her oddly. She was dressed in her blue jeans and a pink long-sleeved button-down shirt.

"Well, someone is in a good mood." Helen looked to her daughter and gave her some breakfast.

"I feel great!" Maddie sipped her orange juice and took a strip of bacon. "Mr. Moseby gave me the day off… with pay… and I'm going to spend it hanging out with Corrie and Mary-Margaret."

"Maddie…" Her grandmother sipped her morning coffee. "I read about that girl who jumped off the roof of the hotel. I'm so glad it wasn't you." She shined her elderly maternal features to her granddaughter and caressed Maddie's shoulder and face. "I would have missed you so much!"

"Don't know why anyone would want to jump off the Tipton except to sue those blackhearts." Sean Fitzpatrick rubbed his whiskers and looked to his wife readying to head to work as a hostess at the Worsham's Restaurant off Beacon Street. "Wilfred Tipton is a crook. Everyone knows it. His daughter will probably be just like him." Helen tried to shoo his Celtic bravado. Maddie was still friends with the man's daughter. Liam looked up from his scrambled eggs. Maddie ate her fried potatoes with her scrambled eggs and sipped her juice, rolling her eyes over her father's crazy persecution of the wealthy. She had met Wilfred Tipton several times and while he was a captain of industry with a Fortune 500 company, he did have his charitable side… when he was in a good mood.

"That reminds me…" Sean took a moment to eat his breakfast and finish off his coffee. "Maddie, your sister, Maureen, and her husband have been dodging my phone calls. Your mother and I need you to cover the phone bill this month."

"But you haven't paid me back for the water bill." Maddie pointed out. "I still need to buy new clothes before school starts."

"Get the money from London." Sean finished his coffee. "You can either get the phone bill, the water bill again or give Liam his allowance. What's it to be?"

Liam looked up beaming that disgusting grin. He liked taking money from her.

"The phone bill…"

"Good girl…" Sean refolded the newspaper to the pages with the horse races. She had a good idea where her father was spending his paycheck from the subway from the racetrack stubs in the trash. Sighing depressingly, she felt her mother kiss her cheek and give her a hug.

"Don't worry, honey…." She whispered to her. "I already got it." They shared a memory. "I'll help you get new clothes when I get my paycheck." Helen Fitzpatrick adored her daughter and her son. Eager to get to work, she caressed her daughter's hair and left the running of the house to her own mother. Chloe O'Connor loved her grandchildren too, but if she had to pick one, she loved Maddie most. Liam was destined to be on _America's Most Wanted_ some day. Until then, the family was going to struggle to pay the bills and stay just ahead of getting tossed out on the street. Maddie's eyes looked down to the horse races. When she looked, she noticed that some of the horse's names in the individual races were jumping out at her. The ink seemed to be elevated and lifting off the page to her. Were she experiencing premonitions of the winners? It had to be another of the abilities given her. She looked to her grandmother.

"Hey, Fatty…" Liam was being obnoxious again. "Do you like seafood?" He opened his mouth to his breakfast chewed up in his mouth. "See food…" Maddie gestured secretly and his chair flipped backward with him in it. Crashing backward, he landed hard and his grandmother strided over to lift him up.

"What was that?!"

"It looks like your karma is catching up with you, kid." Chloe helped her grandson back up. Maddie finished off the last of her bacon and downed the last portion of her juice. She grabbed up the section of the paper with the horse races and left behind the front page with the story of the blonde presence over Boston.

"I'm heading out, grandma!" She kissed her grandma and raced back up the stairs for her purse.


	7. Chapter 7

7

Cute and attractive Mary-Margaret Dawson formerly attended Our Sister of Perpetual Sorrow with Maddie during the school year, but next year, the two of them would be enjoying the thrill of public school at Cheevers High. The curly haired African-American cutie also worked in her spare time as a teller at the New England Community Bank, sometimes in the window and sometimes at the counter. When she wasn't busy, she read the novel _Effigy_ by William Collins about a haunted ghost town in the New England countryside and the teenagers stranded there, but it was hard to keep up with it between bank patrons. Unlike Maddie, she didn't work because she was struggling; she did it for a sense of purpose. Her grandfather was a judge, her mother was a pediatrician and her father was an elected official. She also had two older brothers and two younger sisters, and they all got along well with each other. As much as she felt for Maddie, she always realized how good she had it.

"Hey girl!" Maddie appeared to her.

"Hey girl…" Mary-Margaret looked up. "Sorry I couldn't come, but I hope you and Corrie are having a good time."

"I haven't caught up with her." Maddie was beaming happily. "Could you put this in my account? I want two thousand in my checking and the rest in savings"

"Holy crap!" Mary-Margaret saw the check amount: twenty-three thousand, nine hundred-and-seventy-three dollars made out to Madeline Fitzpatrick through the Charter Bank of New England. "Have you been modeling again??"

"I wish…" Maddie rolled her eyes as a young man with a duffle bag crossed behind her for the tellers on the other side of the room. "I'm still under that contract to the Super-Blonde people, and my last job for Corrie's uncle was for only twelve hundred dollars and my dad borrowed from that."

"Girl…" Mary-Margaret filled out Maddie's receipt and passed it to her to sign. "You've got to stop loaning money to your dad. He's draining you dry. He's never going to pay you back!"

"But he keeps promising to." Maddie responded. "He hasn't touched my college tuition, has he?"

"Not that I can tell." Mary-Margaret answered.

"Hey…" Maddie changed moods. "Who do I talk to here about investing?"

"You mean like the stock market?"

"Yeah…"

"Mrs. Cuoco, I guess…" The teen cutie responded. "She handles my dad's investing. How about a CD? It matures four months after you get it."

"Oooooooo, those are good investments!" The blonde one reacted. "How do I get that?" Maddie asked as the bank alarm went off. The guy with the duffle bag raced out as fast as he could run while clutching his bagful of stolen money. The upset teller started screaming she had been robbed. Shocked into speechlessness, Mary-Margaret could only step back from what was her third robbery since she had started at the bank. The security guard gave chase out the bank with Maddie racing out behind him. Holding her ears from the alarm, Mary-Margaret realized she'd have another hard day of answering questions from the police. She was just glad it wasn't her. The bank manager came out to see how much had been taken from his teller. As he tried to calm his terrified employee, there was a crashing sound and something fell through the sky light of the bank. The guy with the duffle bag was back with a steering wheel from his car by his side and his bag dropped down next to him. He smashed hard into the center table knocking off the pens, deposit slips and fake potted plant and landed with a disgusting thump on to the floor under him. The back-up security guard realized who he was and pulled his revolver on him before calling his partner back to the scene. The addle-brained and back-broken criminal looked confused. He had but one question on his lips. Where did that blonde in the red cape come from?

Maddie glided over the wind current over Boston balancing herself on the breeze. The _Superman_ movie soundtrack resounding in her mind, Britney's _Stronger_ song lyrics on her lips, her arms stretched out left and right, she just allowed the forces of the planet pull her along, but she had to steer herself around the ascending buildings and up over the high towers and steeples. Content, happy and at peace, she drew her right hand down over her bosom and outstretched her arm toward the roof of the Tipton wanting to peek in from the outside to London. She buzzed around the building once, the excited guests of the roof top swimming pool trying to get a look at her with their picture phones. Lifeguard Lance Fischman arched his head at the fleeting blonde girl buzzing the hotel in the red cape. He dashed around the excited guests trying to get a better look at her and better camera shots. Even standing up front against the observation deck, he could barely see the enchanting goddess's face. She glided up alongside the side of the hotel up to the penthouse.

Deep inside the hotel, Zack and Cody turned up on the sixth floor to get a good look of the closet that had once entrapped Maddie. It was down the hall from Suite 613, and Arwin was very busy at removing the shattered door and installing a new one that fit the already established décor of the hall. He had matched the paint of the last one, removed the shattered wood shelf and replaced it and had lifted back up the steel shelf across from it; this time bolting it to the wall. One of the housekeeping staff would restock it. He looked up to the boys coming toward him.

"Hey, boys…" He noticed Zack and Cody coming to watch him. "What's up?"

"We wanted to see the closet." Zack spoke up. "Can't believe London locked Maddie in it." Cody looked down to the haunted suite he was still fascinated by.

"She didn't lock her in exactly." Arwin manually screwed the door to the doorframe. "She barricaded her in with the chair."

"Isn't it an odd coincidence that Maddie got locked in a closet so close to the suite she got trapped in." Cody's mind was working and analyzing the situation before he turned round.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not sure yet…"

"You boys want to see something else strange." Arwin stuck his screwdriver in his belt and gestured off to the side where the shattered door was propped against the wall. "Remember Maddie said she had been out cold until she woke to find the door open…." He pointed to the splinter pattern in the door. "This was the side of the door that was to the closet, and these splinter patterns are from where the door was struck." He looked back to the boys as he played CSI forensics. "They came from the inside of the closet. Something in there with Maddie let her out."

"It looks like someone punched their fist through it!" Zack held his own fist to the hole in the door. Whoever had made it was slightly taller than him; he had to raise his arm a bit to reach it at striking height.

"I don't like this…" Cody was shaking his head.

"Oh my god…" Zack heard the elevators behind him. "Do you know what this means? Maddie must have hulked out and broke down the door!" His over-imaginative brain started picturing strange comic-book scenarios. "Don't get Maddie mad! You wouldn't want to get her angry!"

"What are you guys talking about?" Maddie's voice had arrived from the elevators. Out of her hotel uniform, she was garbed in her pink shirt and blue jeans, her fingers tucked into the front pockets.

"Nothing!!!" Zack threw himself back in fear from her against the wall.

"Zack's got this crazy idea that you've been altered by gamma radiation." Cody looked to Arwin and back to Maddie. She narrowed her eyes a bit reflective, looked to Zack and back to Cody. Arwin giggled at the concept.

"Yeah, isn't that crazy…" Her eyes scoffed at the idea with a bit of whimsy. "Um, I was sort of looking for London. Is she around?"

"She left for New York this morning to meet Portia." Zack answered. "Probably shopping…"

"Oh…" Maddie lowered her chin a bit thinking. "I guess I could fly up and surprise her…." She mumbled under breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing!"


	8. Chapter 8

8

It was quite obvious that over the last week that a few odd events had popped up in the Boston Herald, the Boston Tribune and the Beacon Hill Express newspapers. They were all reporting incidents that otherwise were unrelated except for the same blonde young lady in the exact same costume appearing at each scene. She had been seen at the scene of eleven convenience store robberies, reported by several mugging victims and observed by the Boston Police Department on more than one occasion, except her activities and appearances were not being made of the official reports they turned into their files. The FAA was very interested in finding out more about her and was somehow convinced she was connected to the Tipton Hotel at the center of her flight pattern. An agent had talked to Moseby about the connection, but his answers went nowhere. The file and report would probably end up in their unidentified flying objects folder. After their discussion, Moseby escorted the agent out politely. Out the side of his head, he heard the bell of the elevator ding and the mother of the hotel twins come out in the form of Carey Martin. Back to her original hair color, she came from the elevators and crossed over to Moseby. By her side, Esteban was hard at work practically living off tips and Arwin was installing new bulbs in the overhead light fixture. She also looked over and beamed at Maddie a second back to work. She gave her a brief hug to thank her for being alive then scanned the lobby for her boys. Neither Zack nor Cody was in sight, but she knew they'd be found eventually. Her steps carried her over to the admission desk as Moseby checked in new guests.

"Mr. Moseby…" She caught his attention. "How's Maddie doing?"

"She's doing quite well." Moseby lifted his mug of coffee to his lips. "I was talking to Mr. Tipton though about how we should reprimand London and how what works and what doesn't, and we both decided that we should start restricting her freedom. He's just recently acquired an old cruise line and with it, he's launching a ship called the S.S. Tipton."

"I don't get it."

"On the ship, he's going to have a school for privileged kids called South Seas High…"

"So he can put London on it and know where she is at all times…" Carey got it. "That's brilliant, plus he'll make a lot of money from the other kids…"

"And best of all…" Moseby mused a bit. "I submitted myself as a candidate to be manager on the ship. If I get it, I'll be moving on."

"Moving on…" Carey took a deep breath. "You mean, you'd leave the Tipton Hotel, but this has always been your home."

"I know…" Moseby waxed nostalgic. "I will always loved this wonderful old place, but I've always wanted to go to sea. I'm getting older, Carey. This could be my chance."

"You know…" Carey was stunned a bit by the news. "Well, we'll miss you a lot here. What does this mean for my contract here?" She didn't want to leave the Tipton. She loved the place.

"It won't affect you at all." Moseby had to do his rounds. He started down the hallway to the ballroom. "In fact, how would you like to replace me here as manager?" Moseby looked at her following next to him. "I could recommend you. Raising Zack and Cody seems like more than enough experience, and you could still do your singing when you want."

"Me? Manager…" Carey thought about it. "Wow, that seems like a big opportunity, I'd sure make a lot more money and… Nahhhhhhhh!!!" They passed Patrick at the podium of the hotel restaurant. Rich Carmichael, one of the waiters, carried a plate of food out to the exterior dining area and passed Norman on his break. Norman was returning back to his post at the lobby entrance. Behind him, the errant twins were following Lance down from the swimming pool on the roof. Promptly at seven, he closed the pool, dismissed the guests and had the area cleaned to open the next morning. As he came down the elevator to head home to his mother, he was followed by Zack and Cody.

"Guys…" Lance looked the twins over. "I'm not crazy. I know for a fact that it was Maddie I saw who jumped off the roof."

"But she lived…" Zack looked at him. "I mean, what do you think? She shot a spider web from her wrist and landed in a web." Zack scoffed at his own reference. Cody rolled his eyes embarrassed even to be related to him.

"I don't know." Lance leaned in secretly to their private gathering. "But just before she jumped she said… I can't control myself."

"What does that mean?" Zack was spooked. His head turned over a bit nervously to Maddie at the candy counter. She looked harmless as she checked and did her inventory, just as she always had. Counting everything, cataloguing her merchandise, keeping the oldest to the front and the newest to the back, she stayed efficient and genial as guest after guest came by for treats or for magazines. She sold another candy bar to another young guest and became aware of a presence. Someone was standing over her. Warren Lake was delivering another shipment from his father's store.

"Here you go, Maddie." Warren brought her new shipments to her on a two-wheeled cart.

"Hey, Warren…" She grabbed the top package and lifted it up.

"Careful, it's…." He watched as she lifted the stack of magazines as if they were nothing. "Heavy???" Maddie realized her mistake and dropped the magazine on the counter. She grabbed her shoulder as if she had hurt herself.

"Ow…" She faked having hurt herself.

"Wow…" Warren looked her over. "You must be stronger than you look!"

"Yep…" Maddie agreed with him. "Stronger than I look." She checked the order over on his clipboard for all of a second as Moseby's hand reached over and took it.

"Maddie, go ahead and take your lunch break." He checked his watch. It was ten minutes to twelve. "While you're out, pick me up a club sandwich at the Waverly Diner… no pickle, extra tomato, half mayonnaise, half mustard with ham on top and beef on the bottom and lettuce on the side." He loaned her the use of his gold card. "And whatever you want for yourself."

"Anything else?"

"You have one hour."

"Right…" Maddie shared a look at Warren and reached for her jacket. "Back in a flash…" She beamed her grin and realized she'd have to race it to get lunch at home and then grab Moseby's sandwich on the way home. Or she could grab the sandwich first and then head home with the sandwich. Maybe for a normal girl, she reckoned. Norman held the Tipton door open for her as she headed out onto the busy Boston sidewalk. Maddie's brown eyes looked around her, up the street and back. Her eyes were already glowing blue as she raced down the street toward Beacon Street, reached the alley near the movie theatre and ascended with a rush of air up into the sky, her long blonde hair flowing around her and her cape flapping around the pouch carrying her clothes on her back. A flock of birds dispersed and split up as she soared through them. A moment to gather her bearings and she started to turn toward the direction of Lansdowne Street. When she turned her head, she looked down and noticed Bob Partridge, one of Cody and Zack's friends. He was headed obviously heading toward the Tipton to see them, but there were older boys pushing him around in front of the furniture place around the corner from the hotel. He tried to ignore them, but these boys wanted someone to pick on. Maddie decided to be it.

"Hey!" Bob finally turned round a bit sensitive about his weight and red hair. "Don't you guys have something better to do?"

"Yeah…" The older boy flicked Bob's ear with his finger. "And you're…" There was a rush of air and the young punk and his buddies vanished. It sounded like a small sonic boom as the dumpster in the alley suddenly slammed shut. Looking around, Bob could hear the frantic screams of his tormentors violently tossed in with the trash and over off his left side, he made his first sighting of the girl everyone was talking about in the news. She was a hundred feet away up over the side of the street. She was real! He had seen her!

"Zack and Cody ain't going to believe this!" He watched her ascending up over toward Fenway Stadium to the south. She dipped higher in the sky up over Boston Common on her way. In the vicinity, a police helicopter entered the horizon and turned to follow her.

"Oh god!!!" Maddie saw it first. She could not let it see her head into her parent's house. The pilot in the traffic copter started following her over her flight pattern. She veered around Fenway Park and lowered down to surface streets trying to elude it, but it stayed on her. Motorist and pedestrians looked up to the flurry of winds and current whipping around the litter along Beacon Street. She veered around Melville's Restaurant and streaked up toward and over the Cage and Fish law firm. The police chopper was staying right on her.

"What do we do?" The pilot stayed on her.

"Ask her to pull over?" The co-pilot looked to his partner.

"Try it…" His partner looked among their gear and he pulled out a bullhorn. They had not lost her yet. Their blonde quarry was streaking up Somerset Street at ninety miles at over just under the traffic lights. She dodged between the space between two tractor-trailers passing each other, up over a charter bus of fascinated tourists and on-lookers. Her teeth clenched in fear, her eyes surveying her path, Maddie dipped under the space of a garbage truck, shot up and around a parked van and swerved to miss the stoplights in her path. The traffic chopper was coming up right on her.

"This is the Boston Police department…" An amplified voice called out. "Please, uh,… land!"

Maddie veered close to the ground soaring at just two feet off the ground around moving cars. They were practically sitting still for her as she dodged and weaved around them. She clenched her fists tighter and started forcing herself to go faster. She looked behind her as the chopper just barely reached to keep up with her at a hundred and eighty miles an hour. Everything was turning into a blur, she looked back up at it a second and then toward her and the bike messenger in her way. She forced herself straight up into the atmosphere, nearly knocking his helmet off as she launched herself straight up into the air. A small sonic boom sounded when she hit open air space.

"Oh god… oh god…." Maddie vaulted to a stop. Her pulse racing, her heart pounding, she looked around the air and found the area clear. She had lost it. It was nowhere near her. She was okay now. Her breath slowed and she turned to head back down and that's when she saw it. Standing up straight in the harbor, constructed of green stained copper with her arm stretching her torch to the sky, it was the Statue of Liberty!

"Oh, my god! Oh, my god!" She started breathing hard again. She had just launched herself over two hundred miles in just a few seconds! Hovering not far from her face, she looked back and peered down upon the skyline several hundred feet below her she had seen in so many photos. She could see Ellis Island right and Brooklyn to her left. She lifted her wrist up and peeled back her sleeve. She had forty minutes to get Mr. Moseby's sandwich and return to Boston. Where was there a sandwich show in this town?

Her mind made up, she dropped down to Manhattan. On one level she was excited, she never been to New York by herself, nor could anyone recognize herself. There were so many more people. So many more structures heading straight up… and much more activity to see here. In this town Maddie felt like the exact same heroine she was imitating. At Marvel Comics, the artists rushed to see her streaking by the building. Pedestrians arched their heads up and pointed up at her sailing over Carnegie Center. Over Wall Street, her backwash nearly emptied every newsstand in the vicinity. Excited kids at a playground stopped playing to see her streak overhead. Maddie spun round the block again and shot past the seventh floor of the Empire State Building over stunned witnesses. What? They never saw a flying girl before? She saw a diner rush past her and she screeched to a stop close to Greenwich Village. When she stopped, she saw another one.

"Hi…" She had landed, dressed again and walked into the Waverly Station Sub Shop. She liked the name. "I'd like a seafood sandwich on wheat and a club sandwich - no pickle, extra tomato, half mayonnaise, half mustard with ham on top and beef on the bottom and lettuce on the side."

"You like Niagara Falls to wash that down?" Brunette, cute, sixteen-year-old Alex Russo looked over the counter as she cut the bread. Her father came over to help with

"The extra one is for my boss." Maddie checked her watch.

"Not a problem." Alex's father, Jerry Russo, spread mustard on one half and mayonnaise over the other half of a long French bread as his daughter prepared the seafood sandwich. He reached for the meats. "I thought I knew all of my daughter's schoolmates, you new here?"

"Just passing through." Maddie shined a bit. By her side, Justin Russo beamed toward her as he swept the store. He looked up and down the Ashley Tisdale look-alike before him and felt a twinge at his heart. Maddie looked over at him and beamed ear-to-ear to him.

"Hi…" Justin shined toward her. "I'm Justin Russo… and you're…?"

"Maddie Fitzpatrick..." Maddie shined toward him. He was cute!

"You know," Justin looked to his sister rolling his eyes and his father stacking meat. "My school has a dance going on this Saturday, uh, would you like to…"

"I'd love to…" Maddie saw the price of lunch. She passed over Moseby's card to pay for his and a five dollar bill to cover her own. "But I'm working that night."

"Where do you work?"

"The Tipton…" Maddie confessed then caught herself.

"The Tipton?" Justin rolled his eyes. "Isn't that all the way down in Boston?" Justin looked at her intriguingly.

"Hey," Alex rushed around the counter. "Do you know London Tipton? I love her website, Yay-Me-It's -London-Tipton-dot-Com! Is she really as funny in real life as she seems on the Internet?"

"Funnier!"

"Is she really that stupid?"

"Well…" Maddie checked her watch. "Oh, I got to go!!! Loved meeting you…" She fit the sandwiches in her knapsack and started hurrying to get it back on. Justin was checking her out as she hurried out.

"Odd, she'd come to Waverly Place just for a few sandwiches." Justin wondered out loud.

"Maybe she's a wizard like us…" Alex mused a second as a joke, hesitated and looked back out the shop entrance. "Dad…" She looked up to her father. "Is she a wizard?"

"I get a vibe from her as if she were a wizard…" Jerry scowled as he looked out the way Maddie had rushed out of the shop. "But it was much more intense… much more powerful as if she were… immortal or something."

"You mean…" Justin had studied his magic lessons much more intensely to understand the reference. "Like a Greek god?"

"Hey, dad…" His son, Max, hurried down from their upstairs apartment before his father could respond. "You're not going to believe me, but Supergirl just streaked past our balcony!"

"Max…" Jerry looked at him. "What have I told you about telling stories!"

Streaking across Long Island Sound, Maddie swung across much of metropolitan Manhattan toward JFK Airport and hesitated just under the radar range to pull her long blonde hair back to listen to the FAA calls buzzing about her. There was a flight to Germany and another to Atlanta. There was another heading to Chicago before she heard the Boston call she wanted. The Tipton private jet had just taxied and left ground to head to Boston. That was the direction Maddie wanted. Her intense blue eyes scoped out the myriad dots around her, her powerful eyesight glowing brighter as she zoomed in from a hundred feet toward the planes to spot London's plane returning to Boston. Her head turned toward her and she curled her fists into balls and aimed herself after it. Soaring toward the target, she started getting closer and closer… she'd never piggybacked a plane before… much less one in flight. Surrounded by sunlight, clouds and sky, she was briefly buffeted by the plane's turbine engines and she weaved around the tail section to avoid the jet propulsion. The pilot meanwhile noticed his slight bogey coming up behind him. It was too big to be a bird plus he wondered how it was staying up with him. The jet stream whipping her long hair and cape around her, Maddie checked her watch again and reached down to touch the surface of the plane. Staying in contact with the plane in flight was a bit of a trick for her but something was letting her do it. She carefully lowered her head down and peeked in through the window. When she did, Ivana looked up and locked eyes her.

"Ivana…" London sat in her seat and looked at her cherished pet. "Why are you barking like that? You only bark like that when you get near…" He head turned to the face in her porthole looking in at her. "Maddie!" Her best friend's face vanished from her. London pressed her face to the window and looked out around the plane. All she could find was clouds, sky and blue sky all around her. Confused and perplexed, she wondered about what she had seen. Was it real? Did she really see that? She wanted answers! Her finger hit a number on her phone.

"Tipton Hotel…" Moseby answered. "How can I help you?"

"Moseby…" London spoke into it. "Tell Maddie she cannot ride on the outside of my plane! She has to ride on the inside like everyone else!!!"

Moseby made a face of disbelief. What the heck was she talking about now?!

"London…" He started out calm. "What are you talking about?!" He suddenly shrieked a bit exasperated.

"Maddie is on the wing of the plane!!!"

"Is she having a tea party with a gremlin and Santa Claus?" Moseby humored her. He looked up and noticed Maddie entering the lobby. She seemed out of breath and trying to catch her breath. She had made it back with fifteen minutes to spare.

"Moseby, don't be ridiculous!" London argued back. "Christmas is at least five months away!" She paused rolling her eyes. "Maddie is on the wing of the plane!" Moseby rolled his eyes exasperatingly aggravated and tried to find himself. Returning to the hotel, Maddie gave him his sandwich and his gold card and he handed her the hotel phone.

"Deal with it!" He departed to have his lunch. Maddie took a deep breath, looked toward him and pressed the phone to her left ear after brushing aside her blonde hair.

"Hello?"

"Maddie…" London heard her and rolled her eyes confusingly. "Why are you on the wing of my plane?"

"I'm not on the wing of your plane." Maddie confessed. "I'm in the lobby at the Tipton."

London rolled her eyes trying to think. How could Maddie be in two places at once?! Without another word, she turned off her phone, leaned back in her seat and tried to think. Did she really see Maddie outside her father's plane? Did she even really see a face? Was there anything even really there? She stroked Ivana's hair back and tried to think.

"We really did see that didn't we?" She asked the dog. Ivana just stared up at her in quiet stoic devotion, her doggy brown eyes nervously looking back her. London gasped confusingly another minute and started doubting her sanity.


	9. Chapter 9

9

After the much-publicized aerial chase through the city, the newspapers caught up with the police pilots and convinced them to talk to a sketch artist to get a picture of the super-powered blonde girl that flown through the city between ninety to a hundred miles an hour. Their accountant described an attractive young lady about five-foot-seven with long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Several Boston natives soon began identifying blonde and attractive female friends, relatives and cousins with blue eyes. From Detroit, Kerry Hennessy e-mailed the paper to report the girl vaguely looked like her sister, Bridget, then attending college in New York State. An FBI agent named Fox Mulder turned up in Pickford, Illinois to confront a young lady named Keely Teslow. Back in Boston, both Zack and Cody thought the picture resembled their blonde candy girl babysitter… except for the blue eyes. Moseby and Arwin meanwhile stood at the admissions desk of the hotel trying to see if they recognized her.

"She looks like Jessica Simpson." Moseby sipped his coffee as he read the newspaper.

"I think she looks like Kellie Pickler." Arwin mused a grin. "Remember when she stayed here…" Esteban came strolling by to return to his post. He leaned into to take a sketch at the girl in the sketch.

"She looks like Mrs. Maddie to me." Esteban saw another face looking out at him. Moseby and Arwin lifted their heads up to look at him, at each other and then across to Maddie who seemed to be listening to them. She had been watching them reading the newspaper about her adventures, but when they looked over at her, she suddenly pretended to be busy and looked away.

"Naaaaaaa!!!!!" Moseby, Arwin and Esteban scoffed at the idea of their blonde candy counter girl leading a double life flying around in a cape and bright red boots. Esteban hastened off to help another guest with their luggage at the same time London stepped out from the elevators. Dressed regally in her best Parisian dress and carrying her little long-haired Pomeranian pooch named Ivana, her long black tresses bounced on her shoulders as she made her way over to Moseby.

"Moseby, I want the most current famous celebrity for my next show of "Yay-Me-It's-London-Tipton!"" She looked over to Moseby a bit vacuously. Her sum brainpower must have been registering on the level of a forty-watt bulb. "Who is the most famous celebrity in the news right now?"

"Britney Spears?" Moseby guessed.

"Lindsay Lohan?" Arwin tried a guess.

"No, think bigger!!"

"Madonna?"

"Lindsay Lohan?" Arwin just really wanted to meet her.

"No, bigger!" London insisted.

"Orlando Bloom? Hannah Montana? Hugh Jackman?"

"Lindsay Lohan!" Arwin screamed out his crush once more and Moseby shooed him back off to work.

"Who, London? Who do you want?" Moseby lost his patience.

"Her!" London lifted up the newspaper with the sketch of the mystery girl in it and waved at him. "Everyone wants to know who she is! Just think how big it will be when I finally get her!" She beamed her biggest grin at him.

"London, that's impossible!" Moseby took back the paper and placed it back to his post. "The police can't even find her, and besides, it's more than likely she's actually several different girls doing normal things confused as grand events." He walked out turning over notes to Irene at the concierge desk and then back to his post. "She can't possibly exist."

"That's what everyone said when I wanted Bigfoot, but I got him!" London chided him for being realistic.

"How could you finally get her to appear on your show?!" Moseby was getting impatient with her crazy schemes.

"Money!!!" London waved a wad of bills from her pocket, and Maddie suddenly looked up from her Harry Potter book to take interest. Moseby just sighed defeatedly and checked on his hotel activities on the hotel laptop.

"I'll see if I can find her…" Moseby defeatedly shook his head.

"Yay me!!! London cheered herself. Her hand reached up to look at the sketch in the paper. "She kind of looks like Maddie." She and Moseby turned their heads to look over to the candy counter. Maddie was watching them one minute then very quickly lifted her book up to hide behind it.

"Naaaaaaa!!!!!" London and Moseby scoffed at the idea in unison, and the vacuous young heiress turned with Ivana on her arm to head out to her favorite restaurant for lunch. Arwin had started wandering back over to Moseby.

"She wants that young lady from the paper on her cable show." Moseby moaned out loud.

"Look," Arwin sighed a bit. "Dressing up in the huge shaggy ape costume for her was one thing." He busted one successful stunt. "But there is no way I can pass for a blonde teenage girl in a superhero costume." He paused to think about it. "Hey, maybe you could get… Lindsay Lohan!!!"

"Get back to work!" He shooed off Arwin to return to work, gasped and composed himself. Pulling out his wallet, he stepped out from behind his post and wandered across the lobby over to Maddie at the candy counter. She sold a box of bonbons to a female guest and looked up to her employer.

"Maddie…" Moseby produced his gold card. "Isn't there a costume shop over on Demonbreun? I want you to go over there, get a Supergirl costume and come back and do London's show. Keep a thousand dollars for yourself."

"What?!" Maddie reacted with stunned shock. "Mr. Moseby…" Her mind started racing. Her mind started working. "I can't… I mean, I, uh, I wouldn't…. be caught dead in one of those things!"

"Two thousand dollars!" Moseby offered. Maddie held her hand to her chest. Her heart was about to explode from the offer.

"Mr. Moseby…" If she was caught wearing that costume in public, she could be recognized. She'd never have a moment's peace again! "I can't! I mean, I just can't! I mean, wait! That girl has blue eyes! I have brown eyes! I could never fool London!"

"Curses! You're right!" Moseby turned away, and Maddie clutched her chest again for a breath of relief. "But London wants that girl…" He started thinking of a way to make London happy. "Maybe I can get Kellie Pickler to do it. If not, then I'll spring for Lindsay Lohan."

"She's coming!" Arwin raced around Esteban and dodged past Patrick from the dining room. "She's coming! Lindsay's coming!!!"

"You're old enough to be her father!!!" Moseby screamed at his infatuated maintenance man. He groaned frustratedly thinking he was trapped on a TV series on the Disney network. "Could you at least get me my sandwich again from the same place?" He turned back to Maddie.

"The same place?" Maddie reacted.

"Yes, it was great!" He raved on the meal. "They made it exactly the way I wanted! No pickle, extra tomato, half mayonnaise, half mustard with ham on top and beef on the bottom and lettuce on the side… just perfect! I want you go to the same place. You can find it again, can't you?"

"The same place?????" Maddie freaked. She had to fly all the way back to Waverly Place?! "Mr. Moseby, I don't think I could…"

"Maddie, I believe in you…" He slid his card back to her. "Please…"

"Another sandwich from the same place…" She tilted and rocked her head hesitantly as she reached for her backpack. She stepped out from her counter to head out on her errand. "Oh god… what have I got myself into…" She ran out the entrance as Norman held it open for her and rushed around the corner for the alley beyond the furniture store as her fingers pulled at the hotel uniform over her costume…

Along the way, she flew through the range of Cody's automatic camera snapping photos of the birds perching outside his bedroom window.


	10. Chapter 10

10

Maddie rang up another newspaper as more of the Tipton's guests purchased newspapers. The current story in the newspaper was the coverage of young Sierra Lewis. The six-year-old had vanished from a playground in town just sixteen blocks away, but what made the story was that minutes after she was reported missing, she had been returned to her house claiming she had been saved from the back of a van and two guys by a beautiful blonde angel wearing a red cape. It truly seemed that Boston's resident guardian angel was on the job and was doing everything she could do to protect it's inhabitants. From a reckless driver on Highway 9 to the street gang that tried to rob the jewelry store… from the scared teenager who nearly wrecked her new car to the window cleaner who nearly plunged to his death from the seventh floor of the Edmonds Hotel… this blonde beauty was proving to be everywhere even if most of the city was not convinced she truly existed. From the candy counter, Maddie heard the guests debating whether her costumed alter ego was a figment of the mind or promotional stunts for a movie being taped in the area. She beamed secretly to herself fighting the temptation to scream out it was all her, but then the thought of actually being recognized in her secret outfit scared the heck out of her.

"Maddie…" Lance hastened his step across to her at the counter. "Hey… um, I wanted to get you this."

"What is it?" Her finger took the envelope from him.

"It's a Thank-You-For-Being-Alive Card." The slow-thinking lifeguard pulled his curly brown hair back. "For not being that girl who jumped off the roof… even though she looked exactly like you. I thought it'd make you feel better."

"I didn't know Hallmark made such cards." Maddie pulled the card out and read it. "Oh my god, they do!" She looked up to Lance. He just sort of grinned awkwardly at her.

"Life is special, life is a gift…" Maddie read the card. "Just a gift to thank-you for being alive." She beamed ear-to-ear looking back up to Lance. "Thank you, Lance, but… aren't you still dating London?"

"Didn't you hear?" Lance looked at her. "London's going to going on to school on a big boat that's, like, called a ship."

"She's not going to be living here at the Tipton?" Maddie asked.

"I guess not…" Lance stepped back as Maddie stepped out to fill the glass trays for the guests. "It's all kind of supposed to be to force her to go to school… and sort of punish her for locking you in that closet and scaring the Pacific out of everyone."

"London's not going to be around anymore." Maddie had always wished it, but realizing it to be becoming a reality was something else. Things were changing so much! She had all these wonderful new abilities and was using them to predict the stock market to make money, even as far as buying stocks in Tipton Industries. Her future wasn't looking so bleak, she felt so good helping people and now, London won't be at the Tipton anymore. Things were changing…

"I'm kind of going to miss her." Lance confessed.

"Yeah, I guess I will too…" Maddie caught herself overfilling one of the candy bowls. Cleaning up her overflow, she looked up as Lance headed off to return to his job. Turning round to toss away the empty candy bag, her mind distractedly thought about both the fun and difficulty of being friends with London. It might be easier with her out of her life, but it might also be more boring. Out the corner of her eye, she looked up and saw her old friends from parochial school. Mary-Margaret led the way ahead of Corrie with the dark brown hair. They had been friends with her since they were eight years old, but she had never truly bonded with her the way she had with London.

"I'm off today…" Mary-Margaret felt unrestrained from the bank. "Corrie and I thought we'd come here to eat lunch with you."

"Yeah…" The three of them together looked like co-stars of a movie that starred Zac Efron. "I also wanted to show you my new t-shirt."

"Corrie, wait…"

"Da-da-dah…" She pulled open her jacket to the red and yellow Kryptonian symbol on her chest. "Super-Corrie!!!" She beamed excitedly over it.

"I told you not to do that that!" Rolling her eyes, Mary-Margaret scolded Corrie. Maddie stepped back amused. Those t-shirts had truly started becoming popular since her secret escapades had started.

"What do you think?" Corrie modeled her new look.

"It's great." Maddie mused over it.

"Everyone at school is wearing them." Mary-Margaret revealed. "It's like all the rage since the flying blonde started appearing."

"They say she's like incredibly beautiful." Corrie added.

Maddie looked away as if she were looking at an invisible studio audience looking at her.

"It's perfect." Maddie reached to pull out her "gone to lunch" sign. "I just got the most mind-boggling news about London. Just let me check out with Mr. Moseby…" She put the sign up and hastened over to Moseby as her friends from her old school waited on her. Moseby checked in a couple to their room and signed a waver before him. He looked up to Maddie.

"Mr. Moseby, I'm off to lunch."

"Excellent…" Moseby pulled out his gold card again. "This time, get me two from the shop so I can have one for dinner."

"You want me to get that sandwich for you again?" She discovered she was flying to New York again!

"Maddie, I can't help it." Moseby apologized. "I'm addicted to them plus you're the only one who knows how to find it. I found the Waverly Street Shop here in Boston, but I can't find the Waverly Station Sub Shop… please, you're the only one who seems to know where it is!"

"Two sandwiches…" Maddie shook her head in disbelief and took his credit card.

"But before you go…" Moseby imposed on her one my time. "Cody called and said Carey owed you babysitting money. I thought you'd want to get that."

"Right…" Maddie gasped and stepped back. Baby-sitting money? She hadn't baby-sat the twins since they turned thirteen! Was there a job she hadn't been paid for? Carey had covered her for every job, but she was not going to give up on a chance for more money. She turned round to Corrie in the comic-book shirt and Mary Margaret in the white blouse.

"Guys…" Maddie responded to them. "I've got two quick errands to make before lunch."

"How long is it going to take?" Corrie liked the seafood plates in the Tipton Restaurant. She'd even eat there at full price without Maddie.

"Believe it or not…" Maddie pranced up the steps to the elevator. "I can get them done at the speed of light." She entered the elevator at the same time Arwin and Patrick came around the corner from the restaurant. They crossed the landing toward the main entrance.

"So…" Kiniski departed the hotel restaurant for a few minutes while Arwin departed more hotel gossip. "I heard Moseby is trying to get that girl flying around in the cape for London's web-cam show. How's he going to do that?"

"He'll probably hire some actress to do it." Arwin walked alongside him. "I just wonder who Moseby could get to pretend to be Supergirl for London's show." Arwin crossed the front landing as guests entered and exited. Norman opened one set of doors for a cute and perky blonde former American Idol contestant. Adorable and effervescent, Kellie Pickler shined and looked across the lobby. She looked up to Arwin.

"Hi." She responded with her endearing Southern accent. "I'm looking for a Mr. Moseby?"

"Do you have experience wearing a cape?" Esteban asked the question.

On the twenty-second floor, Maddie emerged and traveled around the corner for Suite 225 where Carey and the boys stayed while she was employed as the hotel entertainer. Maddie would have liked that job herself at one time, but when she realized the good she was now doing with her life, she realized she was finally content with her life. She knocked on the partially open door to the suite and peeked inside it.

"Hello, Maddie…" Cody sat on the sofa at the far side of the room. "Come on in…"

"Cody…" Maddie reacted a bit confused. "I'm a bit confused. I got a message from your mom about money she owes me for babysitting. She doesn't owe me anything. She's paid up."

"Actually…." Cody rose up and took his fake note back. "I wrote that. I wanted to talk to you about something."

"Oh god…" Maddie rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me both you and Zack are in love with me now?"

"No, not that…." Cody started clandestinely. "I just wanted to ask you about your… alter-ego." He started walking around her in a circle.

"What are you talking about?" She looked at him suspiciously.

"Evidence number one…" The gifted young man started. "You claimed that when you woke up in the sixth floor closet that it had been opened for you. Going by the damage to the door, however, it looks more as if it were broken out… perhaps by someone who fly and flip over cars."

"I never said how it was opened." Maddie answered nervously. "I just said it was opened…" She shook her head in disbelief and turned to leave. She didn't like this... it sounded as if he had figured out her secret!

"Evidence number two…" Cody continued. "Lance and several people saw you jump off the roof, and yet, you turned up very alive and the police never found a body…. Almost as if you could fly?"

"You're going by what Lance says?" Maddie stopped and looked back. "He wants to grow up to be a merman!"

"Lance may be ignorant, but he's never known for making things up…" Cody continued to wander around the dinner table of his suite. At the same time, Maddie became nervous, her psychokinetic powers reaching outward from her. By Cody's side were a number of objects on the table. A glass, a vase, a container of sugar, salt and pepper shakers, they had started shaking and he looked over them. They were each rattling and shaking on the otherwise stable table. It was almost as if there was an earthquake, but nothing else was shaking. Maddie noticed them and they stopped.

"What's that?!" Cody asked.

"Maybe a truck just went by."

"We're on the twenty-second floor!"

"Maybe it was a really big truck!" Maddie tried to confuse him.

"Evidence number four…" Cody jumped ahead in his proposition. "I have seen you dashing out the back way of the lobby several times when a police siren went by the hotel. Just where are you going?"

"The bathroom!" Maddie stood up to him and stared him down. "You got a problem with that?"

"Evidence number five…" He noticed the long sleeved shirt under her uniform. "Since when have you started wearing a long sleeved shirt under your hotel uniform…" He poked her a bit in the back. "Are you wearing a cape under that?!"

"It's nothing!!!!" Her stress level went up. The water faucets in the sink came on by themselves as Cody looked over. She rushed to turn them off before he saw them.

"Evidence number six…" Cody looked up to her. "The FAA has been asking Moseby about flight traffic around the hotel, and London has not had access to the Tipton helicopter in over month."

"You know…" Maddie retaliated a bit to defend herself. "This girl you're asking about…" Maddie rolled her eyes from Cody. "She has blue eyes, mine are brown!" When she looked back to Cody, her usual brown eyes were no longer brown. They were a bright blue. Cody gasped at the sight of her. He was so right… and scared to death at the same time.

"Evidence number seven…" His nervous voice wavered before her. "I saw you race behind the Waverly Street Sandwich Shop and a second later fly up into the air from behind it…."

"Cody…" Maddie blinked her eyes back to brown. "I'm not that girl. Last I heard she was supposed to look like Jessica Simpson! Do I look like Jessica Simpson?"

"Some people say she looks like Ashley Tisdale."

"They do not!" Maddie pushed Cody away from her and he flew backward from her, through the air and over the sofa, bouncing off the wall over the door to his bedroom. Her hands reaching to her face in shock, she could only watch as Zack rolled off the wall and fell to the floor in a ball. He landed on his left shoulder and rolled onto his back. Maddie's eyes widened realizing what she had done. What did she do?! What did she do?! How could she fix this?!

"Cody! Cody!" She pushed the sofa out of her way without effort and rushed over to help him. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! That was an accident! I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't…"

Cody groaned and coughed a bit. He didn't know what hurt more. The two hundred pound blow to his chest, his back hitting the wall or his tailbone upon hitting the floor. Groaning and clutching his chest, he looked up to Maddie rolling him over.

"Your eyes are blue…" He looked at her. She reached to her face, looked away and sat on the floor beside him and rubbed his shoulder. Her eyes were the most perfect shade of blue. It was the shade of a summer sky… of a perfect gem…

"I'm not allowed to tell." She confessed.

"Who says?'

"The voices…"

"What voices…"

"Cody…" She helped him to sit up. "Please don't ask any questions. Just… please don't…" Her eyes were back to brown.

"Maddie," Cody looked over to her. "How did this happen? Are you possessed again.?"

"It's me… it really is… please don't ask any more…" She was scared to death of something.

"What's going on here?" Returning to the suite, Zack looked down at Cody and Maddie on the floor before his bedroom door. He had just returned to get more change for the game room, and he found his brother and the infatuation of his life in a lovey-dovey situation on the floor with the sofa moved out of the way!

"Uh…" Cody tried to think.

"I'm sorry, Cody…" Maddie helped him back up and began improvising. "I was… teaching Cody to dance and… accidentally fling him into the door."

"We had dancing lessons from Esteban over a year ago." Zack didn't buy it.

"Did I say I was…" Maddie started changing her story. "He was… I meant, he was teaching me to dance."

"Heh…" Zack smirked and cocked his head a bit. "If you wanted to dance, you could have asked me… sweet-thing…" He clicked his tongue and pointed at her.

"Maddie… I can keep your secret…" Cody whispered to her and showed her a photo from his camera. It was a photo of her flying over the hotel… close enough to recognize her.

"Thank you." She whispered to him, leaned over and gave him a peck to the kiss for being much more decent to her than his brother might have been. Zack puckered up for his expected kiss, but Maddie just passed straight by him. When Zack heard the door to their suite close, he opened his eyes and looked to his brother coughing and holding his chest.

"I hate you…" He hissed.

"I think she broke my rib!" Cody doubled over a bit.

Outside the suite, Maddie looked at the photo. This small three by four inch snapshot could have ruined her life. She crumpled it up in her fingers, a flame erupting in her fingers to incinerate it and stepped from the suite to turn to the elevator. Somewhere outside the hotel, a police siren screamed through the city. Maddie's ears detected it. Her sensory abilities detected two men recklessly trying to escape the police with two thousand dollars of stolen merchandise in their car trunk. Dusting fried ashes from her fingers, she realized she had to go to work. She reached to her uniform and pulled it open wide, tilting her head up before vanishing up the elevator shaft.

"There you go, Ivana…" Up above in the penthouse, London gave her dog a plate of steak tartar with caviar by a burning candle. She stroked Ivana's long coat several times and blew her kiss before yawning.

"Beauty mask…" She readied for her afternoon nap by rubbing softening cream on her face. "Jesse McCartney…" Her finger started a CD as she pulled on earphones and then she clapped off her electronic lights and leaned backward into bed for the nap before her afternoon spending spree. This was normal to her. Her mind started drifting away as soon as her head hit the pillow. Ivana continued nibbling at her sampling of haute cuisine. Did all pampered pooches eat this good? She continued devouring her two hundred dollar meal created by a professional gourmet. Circling the bowl to get all of it, her back leg knocked over the burning candle on to the floor. Continuing to burn, it rolled and bounced a bit on the carpet melting a few beads of hot wax until the flame came to rest close to the chair with a satin robe draped over it. The satin started getting hot before it started burning. The chair catching on fire a second after…


	11. Chapter 11

11

"One more trip and I'm going to have to give Justin that date…" Maddie rushed back to the Tipton struggling to get her backpack off. With thirty minutes left to her lunch break, she rushed over to drop off Moseby's sandwiches at the admission desk and looked over to Corrie and Mary-Margaret. They had been waiting patiently for her long enough. "Come on guys, I phoned in our lunch to Patrick on the way." Corrie could taste that seafood medley now. She rose to her feet and started coming up behind Maddie, but they didn't get far enough before alarms began ringing. The lights went off and security lights flashed. Guests and employees looked around a second and realized what was happening.

"Fire!" Moseby called out. "Everyone get down the street!" The safety of the guests came first. He watched the mêlée of rushing and panicking hotel guests with a few employees. No one smelled smoke nor saw any fire, but the word was good enough. Following procedure, Moseby quickly checked the alarm controls at his station to see if the twins had pulled it. The only flashing lights for the system were from the twenty-fourth floor penthouse. He suddenly freaked.

"London!!!" He panicked. Guests were rushing past him, people were running from the hotel stores. Diners from the restaurant left their meals behind. Maddie stopped where she was and looked around. There were too many people in her way. Corrie and Mary-Margaret were trapped with her in the alcove near the restaurant. They finally found a niche in the sea of flowing humanity and started getting carried in the flow of hurrying feet.

"Arwin…" Moseby grabbed his employee. "The fire's in the penthouse! I'm going after London!" Maddie stopped and heard what he said.

"But the elevators don't work during a fire!" Arwin revealed to him.

"The main elevators don't, but the service elevator does!" He rushed toward the back of the hotel, Arwin and Esteban racing along after him. Maddie stopped and looked at them. They'd never make it. She pushed Corrie and Mary-Margaret toward the main entrance where Norman and Lance held the doors open.

"Get out of here!" She pushed them away. "I've got to save London!"

"Maddie!!!" Mary-Margaret looked back at her and tried to grab her sleeve. They were on the steps to the front landing. "What are you doing?!" People were still hurrying out around them trying to escape the blare of the fire alarms.

"Maddie, get out here!" Corrie watched Maddie racing after Moseby. She looked back at Mary-Margaret. "Maddie!!!" She raced after her.

"Corrie, get back here!" Mary-Margaret started after her. Instead of turning and following Moseby to the service elevator, Maddie raced directly for the rarely used back stairs that went up through the entire hotel. She tossed off her hotel uniform and jumped up in to the air wearing just her cape and costume, streaking straight up the center of the Tipton toward the penthouse. With alarms blaring and employees rushing out every exit, Corrie pushed the doors to the back stairwell open a second behind Maddie. All she had was a brief glimpse of her best friend shooting up through the center of the stairs. Her jaw dropped open in shock.

"Oh my god…" She barely gasped. Maddie's hotel uniform was at her feet. Did this mean what she thought? Was her best friend the same girl she had been reading in the newspaper?! She stood in stunned shock trying to gather what she had seen.

"Corrie!!!" Mary-Margaret pushed through the double doors behind her. "We have to get out of here!!" Alarms were still going off around them. Corrie could only point up toward she had seen. Too stunned to talk, she could only try to get her best friend to see what she had seen and garble her words before her eyes rolled back and she fainted from the shocking revelation. She fell forward into Mary-Margaret's arms.

"You sure can't make this easy for me, can you?" Mary-Margaret rolled her eyes and held up her classmate.

"London!!!" Maddie kicked open the doors to the same floor as the penthouse, standing in place for a brief second in her Kryptonian identity. The floor was full of smoke, but she raced through it with the form of a angel and the bearing of a goddess, her presence cleaving through the smoke as a light through darkness. London had the entire floor. The extra suites had been converted into closets for her wardrobe, interconnected by halls and escalators and passageways all around the original penthouse. Upon kicking down the doors to the original penthouse, Maddie was bathed in a flash fire of intense heat that tickled and poured over her body. Her hair aloft by the surge of energy pouring around her, she gazed around the burning fixtures and fiery furnishings and charged through the main drawing room for the back hallway. The sound of wood and plaster cracking around her and falling part filled her ears. The legs of the grand piano set ablaze crashed into the floor. Ivana charged out past her to safety as Maddie 's hand knocked a burning beam fallen from the ceiling out of her way. Her glowing blue eyes burned even more brighter, scanning through charred walls, searing portraits and racks of clothing caught aflame. The heat was pressing against her as she charged onward trusting her powers to protect her. At the end of the hall, she pounded down London's door out of her way. Her eyes gazed down upon London's bed surrounded by flame.

"London, I got you." Maddie reached down to the unconscious body of her best friend and started lifting her up into her arms. Ivana was barking somewhere beyond the flames. Cradling London's head to her left shoulder, Maddie started hastening her way back out. Ivana took one more look around the burning room and noticed Maddie carrying out her mistress. Reaching the hallway, the blonde candy counter girl turned and looked back one last time, pulling her breath in deep, filling up her lungs with air and then blowing all of it out at once. The flames started scattering, most of them dwindling away as the gust of wind blew the massive fireball out the far window of the penthouse. The volume of carbon dioxide in Maddie's breath suffocated the flames and turned to ice across the floor. Say good-bye to that London disaster...

"London…" Maddie took a few steps and placed the petite heiress on the floor of the hall under a fire hose in the hall. The compartment also had a miniature oxygen tank and mask. Kneeling to her knees, Maddie pulled the mask over London's face and turned it on to check her best friend for burns.

"London? London, are you okay?" She checked her over. Coughing at first, London's hand reached slowly at first. Ivana was scratching concerningly at her leg. Stirring from her smoke inhalation, her eyes slowly opened.

"Maddie?" Her vision swimmingly tried to focus. "What are you wearing?"

"What am I… Oh my god!!" Maddie panicked and realized London had spotted her in her costume then raced away down the hall. She rushed into London's smoldering penthouse, over the burned remains of the balcony and jumped out into the air. London watched the entire thing. Was she dreaming?

"You saw that too, didn't you?" She reached to Ivana in her lap. Coughing again, she turned her head down the other way toward the voices coming for her. Through the smoky hall, Arwin came carrying a fire extinguisher, and Esteban had an axe ready to chop through a door. The alarms were still blaring downstairs as Moseby noticed London laying in the hall with the oxygen mask on looking up at him. He rushed to her side.

"Good girl, good girl…" He joyfully reached to hug her. "You remembered the oxygen tank in the hall! Good girl!!!"

"Mr. Moseby…" Esteban looked at the charred and smoky penthouse. "Where's the fire?"

"It must have burned itself out." Arwin rationalized it.

"Moseby…" London pulled down her mask and lifted her head up to him. "Maddie saved my life."

"Maddie?" Moseby responded confused as Arwin and Esteban looked at each other. "Maddie's out on the street."

"She saved my life." London insisted as airdropped paramedics rushed down from the rooftop swimming pool. A firefighter with them hurried into the penthouse with gear at the ready and looked around, his hand rubbing over a cover of ice. What the heck had happened here? He and his partner did a quick and thorough inspection of the premises looking for smoldering flames and radioed down to the lobby that the floor was under control. The elevators came back on and the AC units started pumping out the smoke. As London came down in a stretcher for the hospital, she was carried from the elevator past several dozen on-lookers still watching the events conspire. Boston news reporter Nancy Puckett was on the air from the lobby again reporting that Tipton Manager Marian Moseby had lead a rescue of heiress London Tipton, but London knew the truth. When she was carried past Maddie in the lobby, she grabbed her hand.

"Maddie, you saved my life." She coughed on smoke as she was carried out. Maddie just beamed to her and stroked London's hair to fix it. She stood up straight as things slowly returned to normal. Guests calmed down, employees rushes to check their stations and men already arrived to fix the damage.

"Don't worry about it." Moseby took Maddie aside. "She's just delirious."

"Yeah, delirious…." Maddie looked round the lobby of waiting guests uncertain if but to return to their rooms. Moseby leaned in briefly to her and sniffed something.

"Why do you smell like smoke?" He asked her.

"Well…" Maddie struggled for a response. She nervously rolled her eyes. "Everything smells like smoke. London set the penthouse on fire."

"Yes, well…" Moseby sniffed her again. "You've also got her perfume on her."

"Because…." Maddie struggled again. "I leaned over her on the stretcher!"

"Oh, yes, of course…" He stood where he was a second more and started thinking about it. Walking away, he thought of what London said, slowed down a bit and stopped a second. He looked back to Maddie.

"Nhaaaaaa…." He scoffed at the mere idea. Maddie was back to the candy counter. That was what counted. The fire upstairs was out, and it was doubtful anyone would believe London saw her upstairs. She took a deep breath and sighed a bit smelling her clothes. A small bottle of Fabreze from her purse, she started spraying the smell of smoke from her clothes. She looked over to Cody. He got it. He gave her dual thumbs up. Maddie shined a bit and turned to her counter. Looking back at her over the candy counter was Alex Russo visiting from Waverly Place. She beamed her smile toward her.

"It's a lot harder to keep secret than you thought, huh…"

"Where did you come from?" Maddie asked her.

"Tell me your secret and I'll tell you mine…"


	12. Chapter 12

12

"Mom," Maddie arrived home by bus for the first time in three weeks. "This is my new friend, her name's Alex."

"Hi Alex…" Helen Fitzpatrick brushed back her long blonde locks to meet her daughter's new friend. "Do you go to Maddie's school?"

"No, ma'am…" Alex looked around the brownstone once and back to Maddie. "I got to Waverly Place in New York City. I came down to visit Maddie." Maddie gestured up to her room and Alex turned on to the bottom step of the ascending wood staircase in the house, the walls were adorned of numerous pictures of Maddie and her sister, Maureen, growing up together. At a certain point, the photos started to include a small infant that had to be her brother. A few more steps and Alex could see the brother for herself. Liam was on the second floor landing looking down as Maddie and Alex ascended. He was perching over the railing as if he were the resident troll.

"Hey, Fatty…" He screeched that horrible voice of his. "Who's your friend?!"

"Alex…" Maddie sighed and rolled her eyes. "This is Liam, my obnoxious brother; Liam, this is Alex. She has experience with obnoxious brothers."

"Ooooh…" Liam mocked her. "I'm so scared!!!" He bumped her a bit as he forced his way down the stairs. He also bumped Alex on the way down. Alex paused a second, waited for Liam to reach the bottom step and gestured her arm across her chest. When she did, Liam swung his foot out too far for the bottom landing and fell backward, landing hard on his posterior. Maddie and Alex continued on up the stairs

"You're right, he is a booger brain!" Alex followed Maddie into her room near the top of the stairs. Closing the door for privacy, Maddie tossed aside her backpack and tugged away her necktie, massaging her neck afterward.

"So…" Maddie turned to remove her hotel uniform to wash it. "What kind of witch are you?"

"Actually, my dad calls me a wizard…" Alex confessed. "Witch has too much bad history assigned to it." She looked around Maddie's room. It was almost bare, strictly lower middle class. She had a few posters of pop stars ranging from Jesse McCartney to Britney Spears, a shelf of ribbons and stuffed animals, a scuffed and unevenly stained dresser with a mirror and numerous photographs and mementos ranging from old theater tickets to old candy wrappers. "It is so cool to finally get to talk about this. I can't talk about this stuff in front of Harper." Alex turned her head toward the _High School Musical_ poster on Maddie's closet. "She's my best friend..."

"How long have you had your powers?" Maddie braced herself on her dresser to peel off her super-costume.

"They kicked in when I was about thirteen." Alex poked into the closet storing Maddie's Murphy bed in its upright condition. Maddie pulled it down for her sit down and then her sister's bed to sit on for herself. "Since then, I've been fighting my parents trying to use them." Alex continued as she leaned back on the bed.

"Mine kicked in about a month ago." Maddie pulled on shorts and a t-shirt. "I was scared of them at first, but… I really like doing all this stuff saving and helping people. Plus… I've been investing in the stock market using my ability for clairvoyance and predicting how they're going to go, keeping just enough for myself and donating what I can to the mission and my favorite charities. I finally got my college tuition up to a point where I don't have to worry about it."

"Well, I sure wish I had that power!" Alex swung her long dark hair backward. "What else can you do besides duplicate everything that's ever been done to death in the comic books?" Maddie mentally summoned her hairbrush to her hand and started brushing her long hair.

"Let's see…" Maddie tried to think. "Psychokinesis, telekinesis… I'm bulletproof, flame retardant…"

"You are so much more powerful than I am!" Alex reacted jealous.

"You teleported down here!"

"Yeah, but my weakness is my two parents." Alex danced her head around annoyingly as she checked out the teen magazine by Maddie's bed. "My dad teaches me all these incantations and spells, and I have to hide magic from him; he doesn't know I'm in Boston!" Alex added. "You are so lucky your parents don't even know you…" Maddie placed her hand over Alex's mouth. There were footsteps in the hall.

"Hey, girls…" Maddie's mother brought in a tray of cookies and two glasses of milk. "I thought you two would like a snack while you're hanging out." Liam was hanging out in the hall. His mother placed the tray of cookies for Maddie and Alex on the small shelf by the door and handed him one.

"Thanks, mom."

"Thank you, Mrs. Fitzpatrick."

"I'll let you girls have your privacy." Helen Fitzpatrick turned to close the door behind her as Liam tried to sneak one last look. Once the door closed again, Maddie made a gesture for Alex to stay quiet from talking about magic. She picked up her sister's old majorette baton and swung it against the door, bouncing the rubber tip off it. On the other side, Liam learned the price of trying to eavesdrop and screamed at the loud thump to his head. Maddie waited to be sure he was gone.

"Why not just hit with your hand?" Alex tried one of the homemade cookies brought to her.

"When I hit doors with my hand, they come down." Maddie confessed. "I knocked down the door of a closet at the Tipton when London locked me inside. It was the second paranormal event of my life." Maddie nibbled at one of her mother's homemade raisin and chocolate chip cookies and sipped some milk.

"What was the first?"

"I was possessed sometime back in a haunted suite at the hotel." Maddie confessed again. Her demeanor became a bit reflective and introspective. Alex rounded her eyes a bit. "I like… completely lost my identity, forgot who I was and nearly killed London." She added sipping her milk.

"What's London really like?"

"She's my best friend, but…" Maddie lightly shook her head recalling times London was not such good a friend. "But despite how good she seems to be, she can incredibly dense and selfish. She can be generous, she can be funny, she can have a heart, but London's only real friend is London herself."

"Wow…." Alex enjoyed this talk. "I'd like to meet her though… why don't we…" She turned her head to the twinkling balls of light streaming in through the window toward Fenway Park. They started grouping together with a ball of light out of Maddie's mirror. Maddie reacted watching them. They were both beautiful and ethereal as they started gathering at the end of the room into a large ball of glowing sparks. A dark objects appeared in their centered as Justin Russo suddenly replaced them. Reeling a bit from the spell, he looked around the dissipating twinkles of light and recognized his sister.

"Alex Russo!!" He tried to be the stern older brother. "You are in such trouble! Dad has been looking for…" He noticed the other person looking at him. "Maddie?" He forced an awkward grin. "Uh, there is a very rational explanation for…"

"She knows magic too…" Alex revealed.

"She knows magic too…" Justin looked around. Just where was he?

"Uh, Justin…" Maddie looked to Alex and back. "I'm not allowed to have boys in my room."

"Not allowed to have…." Justin looked out the window. "Is that Fenway Park? Am I in Boston?"

"Uh-huh…" Both the girls echoed together.

"Justin, go home!" Alex ordered him and got up off Maddie's bed. "Maddie said she'd fly me home later!"

"Fly you home?" Justin reacted a bit confused. "Uh, Maddie, about that date, I don't think I'm allowed to pick you up in Boston." He noticed the tray of cookies. "Oooh, cookies!" He took one for himself to nibble.

"Justin!!!"

"Fine!" He took another cookie. "But you're going to have to answer to dad." He recalled his incantation and gestured with his hands. "Now I'm here, now I'm there, take me from this place and back to Waverly Place." He turned into an energy clone of himself and winked out. The images of his sister and Maddie before him stretched out of shape as if he was pulled through a long table at the speed of light, but when it stopped distorting, he found himself back in his parent's sandwich shop in Waverly Place, New York. His brother, Max, had jumped back from his brother appearing directly in front of him.

"Can you watch were you're walking?" Justin looked at him.

"Can you watch were you're teleporting?" Max answered back. Justin just rolled his eyes and looked over to his father taking things from their refrigerator to take back down to the shop. Jerry Russo glanced back at his son, placed down a hunk of ham and a container of mayonnaise and leaned over the kitchen range of their apartment.

"Where's your sister?" He sounded annoyed. "You said you was bringing her back!"

"She's hanging out with Maddie…"

"That doesn't sound so bad." Jerry reacted.

"In Boston."

"Boston, huh…" Jerry recollected his sandwich making ingredients. "Well, as long as she's back by… Boston??!! Boston as in Massachusetts??" His irritated voice bounced and skipped over syllables and whole words in his rant before he stopped short and freaked. "She's not allowed to teleport over state lines without me!"

"Hey…" Max spun around hearing the news. "If Alex can head to Boston to hang with Maddie, can I teleport to Chicago to hang out with my buddy, Kyle, from _Facebook_? He keeps asking if I'm ever going to visit him."

"No, you can't!!" Jerry was losing it. "How's your sister going to get home?"

"I think Maddie knows magic too." Justin suffered through his father's questioning. "She's going to fly Alex back later."

"Fly? Fly?" Jerry dropped the ham and mayo on the range. "What kind of wizard is Maddie? I want to meet her parents."

"I kind of get the feeling they're not wizards." Justin noticed the cookies still in his hand and finished his first before his second. "These look handmade." He bit into his last cookie. Jerry ambled and shook his head while holding his chest. That daughter of his was going to be the death of him!


	13. Chapter 13

13

A Tipton Industries van was parked in the alley behind the hotel with maintenance men, carpenters and tradesmen taking supplies up the service elevator to restore the penthouse. The job was probably going to take less than a week. The mess had been cleaned out. London had only lost twenty-two percent of her extensive wardrobe and was going to have a lot of fun shopping to build it back up to more than it previously was. The hospital was not fun for London; they did not give her the princess treatment she wanted, they had discharged her quickly. Rather then suffer through the men hammering, plastering, painting and carrying in new furniture and furnishings, she temporarily moved into one of the smaller suites where she moved her wardrobe into two of the bedrooms and rested in a third. Rumors were she was not going to be returning to the penthouse, she'd be going to go live on an ocean liner.

Despite the distracting activity, it was business as usual. Moseby admitted guests and directed the restoration from afar, Arwin lent his experience where he could in the reparations, Patrick was instructed to keep the workmen happy by sending up food for them to eat and Esteban showed up to keep Zack and Cody from getting in the way. Amidst this activity, Corrie and Mary-Margaret returned to the Tipton a bit reserved and distracted. They seemed to know a secret… a very big secret, and they weren't sure how to handle it.

"Where'd you guys vanish yesterday?" Maddie turned round from stocking candy bars. "Patrick's still holding our lunch from yesterday."

"Maddie…" Mary-Margaret was still reticent about what Corrie told her. She wasn't sure if it was true, but she was sure there was a logical explanation. "Maddie…. Um, is there something you want to tell us?"

"Like what?" The blonde one looked to them.

"Maddie…" Corrie looked toward Mary-Margaret awkwardly and back to Maddie. "Um, I've got a weird question to ask. Um, where were you born?"

"Well…" Maddie humored them. "Boston, of course."

"We…" Mary-Margaret and Corrie shared more nervous gazes. "We thought it might be somewhere else… like…"

"Krypton?" Corrie asked. Maddie reacted from their query by leaning back a bit to get a better brace of their confrontation. Traveling down from his suite upstairs, Cody carried his laptop computer to head to the library, but upon hearing the partial conversation, he was starting to understand what was going on and realized he had to do something. He had promised to help keep her secret.

"Ladies, ladies…" He pressed in beside them. "Look, look…" He typed on his account to the Internet and turned round his open laptop computer on the table. "Mr. Moseby got Supergirl for London's show!" They all looked to the screen. London was broadcasting from her temporary suite and had a blonde next to her in costume.

"Wait a second…" Maddie looked closer. "Isn't that… isn't that Kellie Pickler from American Idol?!"

"London doesn't seem to know the difference!"

"So…" London's voice came from the web-cast. "What's Spiderman really like? Is he still dating Kirsten Dunst?"

"She's got to be kidding!!" Mary-Margaret watched the web-cast.

"With London, it's hard to tell." Corrie answered.

"I can't watch this." Maddie lightly shook her head and pressed it closed.

"No, wait a second…" Corrie tugged Maddie out from the candy counter, escorted her to a place to be frank with her. "Maddie, I saw you. You were…." She gestured with her head than say it.

"Corrie," Maddie placed her hand on her shoulder. "What are you trying to say?"

"Maddie, I saw you!" Corrie waited for her best friend to confess, but Maddie wouldn't do it.

"Corrie, do you have something to ask me?" Maddie faced her point blank. Corrie just sighed and brushed her off while disappointedly turning her head. What kind of friends didn't share secrets? Watching Corrie wander off depressed, Maddie looked over to Cody and Mary-Margaret.

"What's going on here?" Moseby had picked up his mail from Irene. He looked amongst the teenage gathering going on in his lobby.

"Nothing, Mr. Moseby…"

"Well, then, let's see to it..." He tapped his mail off the back of the sofa and continued to his office on the other side of the room. Crossing under the crystal chandelier, he left Rich on charge at the front desk, entered his office decorated in regal furnishings and maneuvered behind his large oak desk. Pulling his chair under him, he extended his legs underneath and perused his mail. He had a letter from his mother which he placed aside to read later over his lunch. He had junk mail for stuff he didn't want, advertisements for things he wouldn't pay for and a bill from his credit card company. He ripped the last one open with his silver letter opener.

"What the…" He checked out his credit card statement. There were a few credit card purchases for sandwiches being purchased with his card at a place called the Waverly Place Sandwich Shop in New York City. Was that where Maddie was getting his lunch? How in the world could she be getting up there and back so fast? He then thought of London's claim of Maddie saving her life and the blonde Supergirl sightings that had turned up since her alleged suicide.

"Maddie?" He realized the truth.


	14. Chapter 14

14

As Maddie flew through the air, she usually sang her favorite songs up high in the sky where no one could hear her. She sang a little Britney, a bit of Aguilera, some of Hanna as well as others from her list of favorite artists. Leaving behind a stolen car on the bridge to Cambridge and five gang members wielded into a dumpster near the square, Maddie soared down on to the grounds of Fenway Park, found her secret stash of clothes and covered up her costume again. To get out of the park, she levitated herself through a somersault over the gate and landed on her feet once more on to the sidewalk across the street from her house. She looked up the street and down for anyone who might have seen her, and then crossed between the parked cars toward her brownstone home. Her feet hopped up the stairs as she pulled the door open. Her brother was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase in the house. He stood up at attention upon seeing her.

"Hello, Maddie…" Liam was unusually civilized. "You sure are looking nice today!"

"What did you do now, snot-head?"

"Nothing…" He took her backpack. "Would you like me to carry that for you?" He pulled the flap back to look inside it for something, but Maddie snatched it back.

"Hands off, booger-rocket…" She swung it back over her shoulder and traversed the back hall to the kitchen. Her father who had been talking suddenly stopped talking in her presence. Her mother and grandmother drew silent and looked back at her. Maddie poured herself some milk in a glass, took a cookie to eat and turned round to the silence. Her mother folded her arms nervously. Her grandmother tilted her head back a bit. Her father sat at the table munching from an apple he took from a large wicker basket on the table filled with fruit.

"What's going on?" Maddie's voice broke the silence. She looked to her mother and to Liam watching from the door to the dining room. Was she in trouble?

"The bank just sent you a gift basket!" Sean Irving Fitzpatrick rattled it on the table. He'd broke it open and eaten the chocolates and nuts. "They sent a letter saying you just reached a balance of almost a million and a half dollars from your stocks! Have you been holding out on us? Since when do you have any money? Has London has been giving you money?" His Irish accent bounced his words and syllables around.

"London doesn't give me any money!" Maddie looked around the faces peering back at her. "Well, she gives me a little bit from time to time, but the majority of that money is all mine…" She looked at their faces. "I've been investing it… for my future."

"We could pay off the house…" Helen Fitzpatrick looked at her daughter's letter. "Pay off the mortgage… get a new washing machine… I could get a new car…"

"What?" Maddie realized just whose money they'd be spending!

"Eddie Marasco has this Classic Mustang I've been wanting…" Sean looked to his wife and back to his daughter's bank statement. "I could actually get it!"

"Wait a second… This is Maddie's money." Chloe O'Connor spoke up for her granddaughter. "She deserves to go to college. She deserves to have a future. Are you two really going to fritter all her money away like that?" She looked to Maddie going into shock.

"Maddie has plenty…"

"But it's her money!"

"Maddie, sweetheart…" Sean stood and shined at his daughter. "You can write a check for your father for twenty-five hun… I mean, thousand dollars, right? I mean, if you're that good at playing the stock market, you should be able to make it up in no time."

"What?!" She could not believe what she was hearing. "And then what? Write you another check? That's not fair! You don't give me an allowance and I have to work double shifts at the Tipton just to get by! You want to save money; stop going to the horse tracks!"

"Maddie, don't talk to your father like that." Helen chided her daughter.

"Maddie, we've got a double mortgage on this house, and living off your grandmother's pension and our paychecks barely cover it!" Sean turned round the oven range as he came upon his daughter. "Come on, princess, you can actually spare the money this time."

"You already owe me more than a hundred dollars you haven't paid me back yet." The bowl of chips on the table started vibrating the more she got upset. "I'm sorry, but you're not exactly the best credit risk in the world!"

Her grandmother reached to stop the bowl from jumping off the table. She looked over and noticed the hanging coffee cups swaying on their hooks and the kitchen drawers gradually vibrating themselves out by themselves. Ian stood watching the spectacle from the doorway.

"Maddie," Sean stood over his daughter and lovingly held her by her arms. "I didn't want to do it like this, but… I order you to give us that money."

"Hell, no!" Maddie refused him and the kitchen light exploded in the socket, surrounding everyone in darkness. "It's my money!"

The chairs in the dining room suddenly slid away from the table and hit the far wall. Liam jumped at the sight of that bit of poltergeist activity.

"What the devil caused that?" Sean turned round and looked at the chairs lined across the wall like a waiting room. He turned back to his daughter. "Maddie… sweetheart, princess… where are you getting the money from?"

"Sean, give it up…" Chloe was pushing drawers closed and trying to stop the cups from shaking. "It's Maddie's money. She can do whatever she wants with it."

"She's nothing but an ungrateful spoiled brat just like that London Tipton." He looked back to his daughter. Even his own wife could not believe he said. "Maddie, you either give us some of the money or else I go to the bank and get all of it. I'm still your father, your guardian and the one responsible for putting a roof over your head." He looked into her face letting her know the facts. "You're still nothing but a seventeen year old girl, so, how's it going to be?"

"You're not touching a dime of my money!!!" Maddie snapped and the kitchen exploded. All at once, the bowl of chips sailed off the table, the cups sailed across the room, the kitchen drawers popped out to the floor, the microwave oven popped open and the kitchen table started dancing. Helen sheltered her mother from the paranormal attack, and Sean whirled around watching the display of power. Liam stood hiding under the dining room table where he had dived. Maddie started crying and shaking, her hands reaching up to hide her blue eyes glowing under her fingertips. She blinked a few times, trying to stop what she had started. Her eyes were back to brown again as she nervously removed her hands from her face.

"I'm getting a lawyer, and I'm divorcing you from out of my life!" Her head shook crying. "I'm moving into a suite at the Tipton, starting my life over and never coming back to this house!"

"Maddie, baby. We're sorry..." Her mother was crying in fear of her. "Please don't do this!"

"I'm also suing for every stinking cent you every took from me..." Maddie's distraught voice trembled through her tears. "And for the mental anguish from living here. You are not going to be able to touch me again!" She turned on her heel and stormed the backstairs to get what little clothes and possessions she was going to take from here. Helen Fitzpatrick turned round for the support of her mother, and Sean stood humbled by what he had seen. He wasn't sure, but… could Maddie have caused this mess?


	15. Chapter 15

15

A soaring wind flushed over St. James Street as Maddie landed near the loading dock and rushed back to her job. Shaking several impacted copper-jacketed bullets from her clothing, she tossed the bent semi-automatic rifle into the dumpster and hurriedly pulled out her uniform from the back lockers where she had hid it. She dashed through the back way of the kitchen buttoning up her shirt, adjusting her hair and returned to the lobby as Corrie and Mary-Margaret looked for her around the candy-counter.

"Hey, guys…" Maddie slowed to a light jaunt.

"Strange thing, Maddie…" Mary-Margaret tilted her head suspiciously. "That blonde girl in the Supergirl costume was just seen over in Watertown busting up a meth lab, and you wasn't here."

"You wasn't here!" Corrie added.

"Kind of makes me think." Mary-Margaret beamed knowingly at her.

"Well," Maddie returned behind the counter. "She couldn't be me because I was too busy web-slinging from here against the traffic after dumping Lex Luthor in the harbor!"

"So you admit it! You…" Corrie reacted confused. "Wait… that's not right…."

"Maddie…" Mary-Margaret implored her. "Please… you can tell us anything… we're been your best friends since the third grade!" She and Corrie reached out to her. "We can keep any secret you tell us…"

"Guys, trust me…" Maddie leaned forward. "There is no way that that girl could possibly be…"

"Maddie!!!" Alex Russo came rushing into the Tipton.

"Who's that?" Corrie asked out loud.

"She's a friend of mine."

"She doesn't go to our school…" Mary-Margaret looked at this new girl. Alex Russo stopped short to avoid running into Arwin, veered around Esteban and pushed between Corrie and Mary-Margaret before Maddie at the candy counter.

"Maddie, I'm so sorry, but something really bad happened!" She was crying hysterically.

"What happened?"

"My father talked to your father." Alex confessed as Corrie and Mary-Margaret listened. "He accidentally revealed your powers to him, and your father turned around and sold you out to the tabloids!"

"I knew it!" Corrie squealed out loud.

"What?!!!" Maddie looked up to the entryway as several reporters started pushing their way into the Tipton lobby. Boston news reporter Nancy Puckett was back again covering and reporting the news. She pushed herself between Mary-Margaret and Corrie and extended a microphone into Maddie's face.

"Maddie, Sara Puckett, Boston news…" She tried to get a statement. "Can you tell us how you got your powers?"

"How strong are you exactly?" Someone else asked.

"Are you from this planet?"

"Are you the same blonde girl who's been appearing around Detroit?"

"Oh my god…" Mary-Margaret made the understatement of the year. Maddie gasped unprepared and petrified by this sudden attention. Things were going from bad to really bad to worse as the news spread. The story was breaking on the news. TV News studios were racing to scoop each other. The news media tossed Maddie's friends out of the way to meet her. Alex jumped from out of the way to keep from getting crushed.

"That girl's not me!!!" Maddie screamed scared for her life. Cameras were taking photos of her from every direction. Flashes of light went off around her. Moseby tried to bust up the terrifying attack with no success. A photographer stood on the Tipton sofa for a photo. Maddie tried to shield her face with a magazine.

"Maddie, how fast can you fly?"

"How often do bullets bounce off you?"

"Are you going to do anything for the Middle East?"

"Who are you endorsing for president?"

"What?!" Maddie couldn't answer all these questions. They were coming too fast. She was really starting to hate her father. How could she know he'd do something like this to her?

"Oh my god…" Alex started backing into the corner crying her eyes out. "I did this. This is my fault!" Maddie wasn't getting any peace. She was trapped inside the candy counter getting photographed and harassed by questions. Her only way to get out was to drop to her feet and crawl out on her hands and knees around the potted plant next to her. When she got to her feet, another photographer headed her off, and another news reporter started poking another microphone at her.

"Maddie, how fast can you fly?"

"Can we get a picture of you in your costume?"

"Are your powers from the sun or are they nuclear?"

"I did this." From an empty corner of the lobby, Alex peeked out at the sudden media circus happening before her. She now realized that Maddie would never get any peace again. It could have been her. "I'm so sorry, Maddie! I should never have told my father about you." She was talking to herself as she cried her eyes out. "I should never have tried to make you my friend… It's just that… I wanted someone to talk magic with…" Her heart started breaking. Her chest started fighting for air as she tried to breath. She looked around to see if anyone was watching her.

"Now I'm here, now I'm there," In secret, she started incanting through her grief to flee the scene. "Take me from this place and back to Waverly Place." She made her escape rather than risk being discovered herself.

"Leave me alone!" Maddie inched her way along the wall as the reporters stayed on her. She tried to run, but people were watching and pointing at her. One of them took her photo on a camera phone. She looked around for a place to hide.

"Hey, she's my friend!" London started swinging her purse at the reporters. "Back! Back all of you! Leave her alone!"

"Maddie!" Moseby grabbed Maddie by the arm and started pulling her through the crowd after draping his jacket over her head. "Mr. Tipton heard what happened! He's sending his helicopter for you!"

"Just get me out of here!" Maddie cried hysterically, but someone pulled the jacket over her head trying to get a picture. Things were getting out of control. Among the reporters, people were asking for help. One woman had not seen her sister in years, a man had lost his home in a fire, a diplomat mentioned his country was suffering a drought, another guy wanted to manage her crime fighting career, Bob was present just trying to get an autograph… Boston's WBTS news station was suddenly broadcasting the scene around the world. The news broadcast about the girl with the superpowers was bouncing off the satellite in orbit to people across the country and beyond….

Helen Chapel and her husband Joe Hackett watched the TV coverage from the terminal of a Nantucket airfield…

Harvey and Sabrina Kinkle in Salem, Massachusetts stopped what they were doing to turn up the volume on their TV…

The TAPS team in Norwich, Rhode Island shared surprised looks about the incident…

Samantha Stephens and her adult daughters, Tabitha and Amanda Stephens, stood watching the broadcast in Newport, Connecticut…

Dr. Gregory House in Princeton, New Jersey made a snide comment about the veracity of the accounts…

Willie Loomis stopped looking for his car keys in Collinsport, Maine as the footage interrupted his ball game, and from there it reached beyond New England…

Melinda Gordon in Grandview, Pennsylvania… Ted Mosby and his best friends watched from the booth of their favorite Manhattan tavern… Judge Harry T. Stone and his wife, Christine, in a Manhattan restaurant… Temperance Brennan in Washington D.C… female DJ Pamela Moran was describing what was happening on TV over the radio in Georgia… Cate Hennessy and her daughter Kerry in Detroit, Michigan… Sam and Dean Winchester in a Fargo, North Dakota hotel room…

Even people who had met and known Maddie were stunned by the story, Phil Diffy and Keely Teslow watched speechlessly in Pickford, Illinois… Jim and Cheryl Belushi of Chicago… three time divorced heiress Jackie Burkhart in Point Place, Wisconsin… detective Grace Hanadarko in Oklahoma City… Troy Bolton and his girlfriend Gabrielle Montez of Albuquerque, New Mexico…

"Hey, does she look like…"

"No…"

It just kept getting worse the further the story spread. Nick Stokes and Warrick Brown in Las Vegas, Nevada stood watching with cups of coffee in their hands. In Seattle, Dr. Izzie Shepard tried to tear Dr. Derek Shepard from watching the footage… Piper and Paige Halliwell exchanged concerned looks as the story broke in San Francisco… In nearby Ashbury, Raven Baxter covered her mouth unable to look away. She knew Maddie from her visit to Boston and could not believe that Maddie could do all the things they were reporting. Down in Hollywood, Dr. J. D. Dorian and surgeon Chris Turk were rating Maddie on a scale of hotness. Over in Malibu, Miley Stewart and Lily Truscott watched the live footage and commented on the difficulty of having a secret identity. South of them in Pasadena, Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstader began arguing and debating the power of Maddie's flight ability against air friction and her drag co-efficient. When they couldn't come to a conclusion, they tried to call the Tipton to ask Maddie over long distance, but the Tipton phone just rang and rang and rang… Police cars had to squeal to the Tipton to try to control the riot. Corrie got knocked to the floor in the deluge and Arwin had to pull her to safety. Carey pulled Zack aside from the fracas.

"Where's your brother?!" She asked him hysterically.

"I don't know!" Zack tried to scream over the noise of voices and questions going at once. Maddie was having a stress attack as the media exploded around her. Lance pulled Mary-Margaret away from getting hurt as bystanders tried to meet Maddie and others tried to thank her for saving their lives. London was knocked to the floor as Esteban tried to get Maddie to the elevators. Her hair askew, her uniform pulled off her shoulder to reveal a trace of her costume, Maddie screamed for help as Moseby continued pulling her toward the elevators.

"Leave me alone!!!" Maddie gestured for the sofa in the lobby to block them from following her. With it, the lobby chairs flew up into the air to create an additional barricade. Reporters snapped photos of the flying furniture. Cody turned round and watched the spectacle as Maddie was jerked into the elevators. Photographers dived for cover, and Cody himself was knocked to his feet in the melee. His laptop shattered on the hardwood floor, and his shoulder struck the deserted candy counter hard. His head lolled to one side as he reached to catch his fall.

"Cody!" His mother was screaming for him.

Cody started opening his eyes. How long had he been out? He was lying in his bed upstairs in his suite, his blankets pulled up to his shoulders. His mother checked his head and caressed his cheek lovingly. She checked his fever through his thermometer.

"Good news, honey…" Carey beamed over her boy. "Your fever broke. You start eating real food now." Her son started looking around the bedroom. His mouth was dry, his head a bit heavy. What was going on here?

"How's Maddie?" He asked with a sore throat. His mother handed him a cup of cold water that he drank a few sips from.

"Maddie's just fine." Carey stroked her son's face. "When she stayed with you last night, she said you were calling her in your sleep. You kept telling her to not fly so high… whatever that means."

"Hey," Zack appeared at the door. "How's Corky the Carcass…" He started laughing at his demeaning nickname for his brother.

"I had this crazy dream about Maddie…" Cody started talking; his voice feeling better. "I dreamt she got all these powers and was flying around in a red cape and little red skirt."

"That's funny…" Zack made a face. "That's been my dream too!"

"Well," Carrie reached up and pulled a photo off the wall. "Maddie's modeling career as the Super-Blonde spokesgirl is probably the cause of all of it." Cody looked at the photo. The costume was similar, but not identical. The skirt was longer, the colors much more vibrant, her cape much different… His dream had been like a movie he had lived through.

"Honey, you keep getting better and I'll bring you some soup from Chef Paollo." Carey stroked her son's head, and turned to carry out the extra cups from his nightstand. Zack ambled to and fro on his feet looking at his brother and missing him. He was not so much fun when he wasn't around.

"And don't ever let me catch you dreaming about Maddie again." He pretended to warn him, then smirked and jovially punched his brother in the arm. He grabbed up his skateboard and started turning out of the room.

"Start getting better, buddy." Zack raced out after a cursory good-bye to his mother. Opening and swinging the door to the suite behind him, he raced to the elevator and took it down to the lobby. When the doors opened, things were all right with the world. Lance tried talking Moseby into building underground channels under the hotel from the pool into the river. Esteban was the hardest working employee in the hotel. London glided in with Ivana on her arm and eight men carrying her shopping bags. Arwin shocked himself while changing a light. Patrick sashayed his way toward Moseby for a favor. Irene twirled her hair as she talked on the phone, and Norman helped the guests into the lobby. Maddie herself leaned across her candy counter to share gossip with Corrie and Mary-Margaret. She looked up and noticed Zack heading out to go skateboarding.

"Hey, Zack!" She called him over. "How's Cody? Is he feeling better?"

"How would I know?" Zack expressed little concern for his brother. "He is awake though...Oh, he had a dream about you." Zack laughed about it to her in front of her friends. "He dreamt you had super-powers and flew through Boston in a cape." He started giggling. Corrie and Mary-Margaret even smirked a bit.

"Okay…" Maddie did not look amused. "I want you guys to give me back those Super-Blonde photos!" She referred to her short-lived modeling career. Zack just rolled his eyes and checked at the time. It was rolling a bit past five o'clock, and Mia Moseby was coming in for her shift at the candy counter.

"Hey, string bean…" Mia looked her over. "My turn for minimum wage!"

"Yeah…" Maddie collected her purse and book.

"Maddie…" Mary-Margaret walked her over to clock out. "We're heading over to the book store. Meet you there?"

"Right behind you…" Maddie turned in her timecard. Moseby was talking on the phone as she turned it in, but he acknowledged her with a gesture. Before him, Maddie beamed ear-to-ear to him and turned round Arwin on his ladder, stepped back as Esteban carried more suitcases and shined toward Norman as he opened the doors for him. Outside the lobby, Maddie's feet skipped down the front steps as a figure moved out to meet her. Maddie turned casually to meet up with Corrie and Mary-Margaret. A hand reached to catch Maddie from leaving…

"Maddie…"

The blonde candy counter girl turned to look behind her.

"Thanks, Alex…"

"Don't mention it…." The raven-haired teen sorceress looked up the bottom exterior step of the Tipton. "But you've got to be much more careful. I may never be able to that again." A police siren sounded in the city. Maddie looked over her right shoulder and realized it was coming from Cambridge Street.

"I've got to go to work." Maddie rushed away from the front of the Tipton. Handing her purse to Alex, she reached to the front of her hotel uniform and pulled it open to her real work clothes underneath….

END


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